


Sue Sylvester Thinks of the Children

by airgeer



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Sexual Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 18:30:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 62,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airgeer/pseuds/airgeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sue locks Kurt in her basement in an effort to destroy Burt Hummel’s campaign. It goes about as smoothly as one would expect. (Set Season 3, beginning at 3x05)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter One  
  
Sue was preoccupied. Usually when she was feeling uncharacteristic concern like this, she would find the person causing her worry and either yell at them until they stopped irritating her or fix their pathetic life so they would leave her alone, depending on which was easier. Generally, it was the yelling. This, however, was not a situation where that would be effective.  
   
“All right, Becky, let me have it.”  
   
“He’s gained eight points since the last poll, and this article in the paper is all about him, Coach.” Becky wrinkled her nose in distaste.  
   
“And there’s nothing in that article about the rumour that he’s only the father of one of his children?” It wasn’t her strongest work, insofar as spreading lies went, particularly since it was true, but she was running low on ideas.  
   
“There’s something about how he misses Kurt’s mom still, but he’s grateful for the love that his new wife and son have added to their lives, does that count Coach?”  
   
 “Well, I think I may have just thrown up in my mouth.” Sue paused. “No, I’m sure I did. Voters will eat up that treacly nonsense Becky. Add that to his blue-collar gruffness and I think we may have a Joe the Plumber situation on our hands.”  
   
Becky’s brow furrowed in confusion at the reference. Her parents apparently hadn’t watched Fox News during Joe’s heyday. “I don’t know who that is Coach. Is it bad?”  
   
“Yes, Becky, it’s very bad. I think I need to some alone time to deal with this. You should go to class or something,” Sue said, waving her hand in dismissal.  
   
Becky patted her hand in sympathy and left quickly, leaving the newspaper on Sue’s desk. Sue glared at it for a moment, seething at her most recent failure to destroy Burt Hummel with a family scandal. She’d thought it was a reliable tack, having used it to great effect against Sarah Palin after she’d proven herself unworthy to hold power.  
   
She sighed. Maybe her work was just not at its best. She’d carefully mislabelled food as heart-healthy in the supermarket in the hopes that Porcelain would be tricked into purchasing it for his father, who would then redevelop health problems, but that had been a bust. She’d tried calling Child Protective Services and saying that a man with an artificial heart was a major caregiver for two minors and she was concerned that he could no longer give them the love and affection that adolescents so desperately needed, but she’d been hung up on. The last tactic she’d tried before the milkman-fathered-his-child rumours had been prank calls made by her new henchman, Otto, reading off a script she’d written. Unfortunately, Otto was not very good at English, and the line, “Is your fridge running, better go catch it, wait, wouldn’t want you to keel over and die,” had come out an unintelligible mess of European accent.  
   
The one good result of the League of Doom had been the proof that she couldn’t trust her menial tasks to the mediocre people of Ohio. She’d imported Otto and his compatriot, Andre, through her ties to the Russian mob. Don Semyon owed her some favours, and she’d had to call in only one to get her two very effective henchmen who obeyed her every word. The language barrier was an issue, but she was almost proud of the way that they were working to improve their English. Almost.  
   
Sue needed a new tactic. If she didn’t think of something soon to turn the tides back in her favour, she would have as good a chance at victory as Shannon Beiste would in a don’t-eat-this-entire-chicken contest. She’d been relatively easy on Porcelain Sr. thus far. She’d been unwilling to really go for the jugular, but she had sworn to win the election so she could change the world in her sister’s memory, and that meant she had to step it up. His weak spot was the same as Sue’s had been, and Sue knew that by attacking his family she could probably make him regret ever throwing his hat into the ring, but she needed to be more subtle than usual or public opinion could turn on her.  
   
Attacking him by making his kids’ lives hellish could be effective, but she’d already been doing that for two years and they were too used to it. She needed something that they couldn’t ignore and would make the entire family regret venturing into politics but that also couldn’t possibly be traced back to her.  
   
She reached into her desk to retrieve her small blender. The comforting whirring as it ground up a protein shake would help her concentrate. As she pulled it out of the drawer, her eye was caught by the empty vial of animal tranquilizers that she had hidden in there months ago and forgotten about. Her neighbour across the street had fallen into the bad habit of leaving his porch light on, and after two nights of poor sleep, Sue had decided to seek revenge for her lost rest by removing his prized English Bulldog from his house, drugging it to prevent it from barking and storing it in her basement. She smiled fondly at the memories of how badly it had affected her neighbour, and how she’d let him stew for a few days before leaving an anonymous note ordering him to leave his damn porch light off and his dog would be returned. The light had not been turned on since, and with an added bonus, her neighbour had taken to staring suspiciously at her if they both happened to be outside at the same time. Sue loved those looks, they gave her a very tangible feeling of achievement.  
   
Her smile spread across her entire face as she considered the possibilities. Directly attacking the kids would look bad, but if one of them were to disappear suddenly, with no evidence to connect her to it, it would surely cripple him mentally as badly as Sue had been when Jean passed away.  
   
She briefly considered Frankenteen, but dismissed the thought when she realized the difficulty in keeping someone of his size fed and docile. She had, of course, a large supply of muscle relaxants in her possession, as one never knows when they will come in handy, but she’s not made of money and Frankenteen would require a prohibitively large dosage.  
   
Porcelain though. He wasn’t exactly tiny, but he was certainly smaller than his brother, and Sue would be much more able to tolerate his presence in her home. She pressed the on button on her blender and leaned back in her chair, smirking. Burt Hummel would not know what hit him, and Sue would be saved the effort of discrediting his bleeding-heart ideals and be able to focus on the more important things. Like special ed classes and removing all trace of the arts from American high schools.  
   
Sue picked up her phone and dialed Otto’s number. She would have him do a little surveillance, pick out the best time to grab Kurt and then all she would have left to worry about would be remembering to lock the basement door.  
  
  
****  
  
   
For a long moment, Kurt stared after Blaine as he stormed off, his eyes blurring with tears. A cold gust of wind reminded him that he was standing outside in November in the parking lot of a dingy gay bar on Drag Queen Wednesday and he stirred himself into action. He closed the back door of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat, closing and locking the doors. When he was safe inside, he let out the breath he’d been holding to keep from crying in a single shuddering sob and buried his face in his hands.  
   
It hadn’t been the perfect night, but it had been fun enough to not regret it, right up until the blowout of thirty seconds ago. Blaine had been excited to dance with him after he cut in on Sebastian, and an encounter with David that didn’t end with one of them in tears was something that had happened so rarely he could count all the occurrences of it with one hand. He breathed deeply, trying to regain control of himself, and reminded himself that when Blaine was sober he would never try to pressure him into anything and that Blaine would never try to hurt him.  
   
He was just about to start the car and go after Blaine, it was way too cold and unsafe in this neighbourhood to not, when something small bounced off the window beside him, which explosively shattered the next instant. Kurt threw himself away from the falling glass instinctually, yelping in surprise. Before he could do anything else to protect himself, the door was open and he was being pulled out of the car by a burly man in a ski mask, who wrapped an arm around him and lifted his feet off the ground.  
   
“What are you doing?!” he demanded, his voice shrill with indignation. He kicked at the man’s knees, connecting hard, but getting almost no reaction. Instead the man began to carry him away from Blaine’s station wagon to the nondescript white van he’d barely noted on the way into the bar. Oh god, he was being abducted in the parking lot of a dive gay bar. His dad was never going to let him out of the house again.  
   
Kurt screamed, as loud as he possibly could. Even if he didn’t always show it, he could probably rival Rachel in sheer decibels of output at his loudest, and he was willing to scream like a girl if it meant that the bear cub (was that the right term? He was burly and at a gay bar, after all) would stop. He continued to kick at his captor, struggling to make it as hard as possible to move him, but the man didn’t even slow down. The side door of the van slid open, and another man leapt out, grabbing his legs and forcing him to stop kicking. He started thrashing around, instead, and was rewarded by the first man’s grip slipping slightly.  
   
“Hey!” someone shouted from the direction of the bar. He could hear people rushing out of the bar. Apparently the combination of shattering glass and his scream had been audible over the dulcet tones of the greatest gay hits of the eighties. Kurt twisted in their grip enough to see. They were too far away to help. The van was right there. He renewed his struggle, desperately squirming.  
   
Blaine hit the guy holding his feet hard and unexpectedly, body checking him with enough force to make him stumble, and then aiming an uncoordinated punch at his face. The man dropped Kurt’s feet, but only to grab Blaine by his shoulders and fling him into a nearby car. His head bounced off the car door with a loud bang and then he hit the ground hard and didn’t move.  
   
“Blaine!” Kurt screamed in horror. He kicked up hard with his newly freed legs, catching the man who Blaine had attacked in his gut, making him stumble slightly, but the guy who’d pulled him from the car didn’t pause, dragging him the last few feet to the van. There was a third person in the driver’s seat, also wearing a ski mask, turned around in the seat to look at him. The second man grabbed his feet again, and they tossed him in headfirst. The hard impact with the floor of the van knocked his breath away, and he barely registered the men leaping in after him and slamming the door shut.  
   
With a sudden jolt and a squeal of tires, the driver peeled away from the bar. Kurt lunged for the door, but midway there an enormous weight slammed on top of him, crushing him facedown to the floor. The heavy man who’d just jumped on him immediately flipped him over and sat on his thighs while his lungs were still spasming from impact, grabbing his hands and pinning them to the floor. Kurt went still at the unexpected position, all of his muscles tensing. He thought he would be ready for sex someday soon. He would never be ready for this.  
   
His worst thoughts were confirmed when the second man leaned over him and undid his tie, pulling it off and tossing it to the back of the van compartment. His eyes welled up with tears, and he was begging before he even considered it. “Please, please don’t, I haven’t- please don’t do this to me.” His voice broke on the last syllables, and the tears devolved into full out sobs. He pulled futilely at the grip on his wrists that the man on top of him had only tightened as he continued to struggle. Kurt could feel his bones of his wrists rubbing together at the intense pressure. The other occupants of the van were silent.  
   
The man who’d removed his tie pulled at Kurt’s shirt, tearing it open. His wrists were released to get it over his hands, and it was gone in a matter of moments, leaving him in his undershirt. They rolled him onto his side, and the man holding him down spooned up behind him, pinning his lower body down by slinging a leg over his hips and wrapping his arms around his chest and upper arms tightly, crushing Kurt up against him. He shivered and squeezed his eyes shut, but they popped back open quickly. He couldn’t stop them, but it would be even worse if anything came as a surprise.  
   
Instead of going for Kurt’s pants, like he expected, the other man reached into the passenger seat of the van and came back holding a small box that looked like it had once held a necklace. The man holding him reached Kurt’s body and grabbed the wrist of the arm he wasn’t lying on. He kept a firm grip on Kurt’s body with the arm he had cast over Kurt’s torso, and Kurt’s bare arm was completely immobilized by the bruising grip on either end.  
   
Kurt stopped begging. They wouldn’t respond, and his voice was getting raspy from having to shout in the bar all night being quickly followed by an abduction. He couldn’t control his tears, but he was doing a decent job of calming his breathing so he wouldn’t hyperventilate right up until the other man turned around again and revealed what had been in the box. He held a full syringe in his hand and as he leaned in towards him Kurt panicked all over again but had nowhere left to go. The man rubbed at the crook of his elbow, locating a vein and in one smooth motion slipped the needle tip into Kurt’s arm and depressed the plunger.  
   
Kurt screamed in frustration as he tried to break the tight grip that he was held in. He kicked his legs ineffectually, aware of his movements slowing as whatever he had just been given took effect. His thoughts clouded and slipped away, and he slowly relaxed in the man’s hold involuntarily. His face felt numb, and his arms and legs were a weird combination of feeling like they were too heavy to move and like they were floating away at the same time. He blinked, and suddenly he was on his back, looking up at the van ceiling. Then his vision was obscured as one of them blindfolded him with a cloth, and it felt like the van was stopping, and a voice in his head whispered that he should be afraid of what would come after the van but he couldn’t bring himself to care as he lost consciousness.  
  
  
****  
  
   
Sue turned the lights of the van off as she approached her house. The last thing she needed was for the neighbours to notice something, particularly English Bulldog, whose suspicious glares since his dog had “mysteriously” vanished and returned were a good ego boost but not so conducive to covert activities. His front porch light was off, as always, and Sue had long since had most of the streetlamps removed. She required the cover of darkness for many things, not just kidnappings.  
   
She stepped out of the driver’s seat, and went around to the side door as Andre eased it quietly open. At least Porcelain had finally stopped his whining, and it was easy to sling him around her shoulders now that he wasn’t resisting. Sue pulled off her ski mask, tossing it into the back of the van. Otto slid around into the driver’s seat, and the two of them left to stash the van back in her storage facility, where she kept all of her evidence, and overflow trophies, since the glee club had continually refused to fail and give her the extra room she deserved for them.  
   
Sue walked the thirty feet to her kitchen door casually, Kurt hanging limply over her shoulders, his arms swaying with every step. She had left the lights on and the doors unlocked to give the illusion that she’d been there all night, and she only banged Kurt’s head against the door frame twice as she squeezed inside. She slowly and carefully navigated the stairs to the basement, because while she personally would not be hurt by falling down the stairs thanks to her enormous repertoire of martial arts training and willpower, she was willing to make allowances for Kurt not being resilient enough to survive a fall down the stairs while unconscious intact.  
   
Her housekeeper, Imelda, was under strict orders to stay out of the basement, and so the blanket she’d left for the dog was still there. She dropped Kurt onto it, and then removed his ridiculous boots and cuffed his ankle to an exposed stud on the wall, slipping a padlock onto it so he would be unable to remove it. The basement was partially finished, but Sue had gotten bored of blackmailing people into working on it, so everything except the bathroom and a tiny bedroom was cement floors and walls with uncovered studs. The basement was not as impeccable in appearance as the rest of the house, but its dreariness made it very psychologically useful. Many had been the day when she had dreamed of locking Will Schuester down here to teach him a lesson, but she had never gone through with it, always remembering how irritating it would be to have him so close to her. She would have broken out in a rash within days.  
   
She had made significant changes to her live storage technique since she’d had Rover or Sport or whatever that dog’s name had been down here. For one thing, humans had opposable thumbs and the power of speech, so she would have to restrain him better than the dog to prevent him from escaping and take steps to hide her identity if she didn’t want him to blab as soon as the election was over and she let him go.  
   
She located her ‘special’ trunk underneath some boxes of Jeannie’s things and dragged it out, popping the lid and revealing the assorted bondage clothing and toys. Kurt’s lanky teenage frame was a bit smaller than the men she usually had in her basement, but most of her stash was adjustable and would work very well for her purposes. She pulled out the hood, one of her personal favourites. It had been one of Rod Remington’s personal favourites too, until that cad had cheated on her. She held it up, examining it for wear in the leather before tossing it in Kurt’s general direction.  
   
Sue dug through until she found the bar of wax, holding it up in triumph when she did. One of the easiest ways to give her identity away would be her voice. Porcelain knew her too well. It would be a simple matter to plug up his ears and would save her a lot of effort in keeping quiet around him.  
   
She went back upstairs and threw a chunk of wax in a saucepan to melt. Out of idle curiosity, she flicked on the radio, just in time to hear “- _Seventeen year old male, Caucasian, brown hair, blue eyes, 5’11, 145 lbs. Abductors believed to be three adult males driving a white panel van, no licence plate. Please call 911 if you have any information. This has been an Amber Alert._ ”  
   
Sue frowned slightly. That was faster than she’d thought. Otto was fairly practised at avoiding law enforcement from his experience with the Russian mob though, so she wasn’t terribly worried that they would be caught. She poked at the wax with a practised hand, then retrieved a cotton ball and turned off the stove. Kurt hadn’t moved when she returned, and she tore the cotton ball in half, turning his head to the side and stuffing the smaller half into his ear. She then poured the rapidly cooling wax over it, filling his ear and plugging it securely. Turning his head to the other side, she repeated the process. Through it all, he failed to react, his breathing shallow but steady.  
   
Sue pulled off the temporary blindfold. Kurt’s half-lidded eyes stared up at her in accusation, glittering with unshed tears in the dim light. Sue jerked away at the unexpected sight, but quickly realized that his eyes were vacant and unseeing; Kurt was very thoroughly unconscious from the carefully measured dose of muscle relaxants.  
   
Sue slipped the leather hood over his head. It would double as a blindfold and muzzle, to hide her identity and prevent him from getting too loud. It would also save her from looking at his big sad eyes, all the kids in that damn club seemed to have them and Sue didn’t want to admit it, but they were effective tools of persuasion.  
   
She laced the hood up at the back of Kurt’s head, pulling it tight around his eyes, then took the long wrap segment and began looping it around his head, pulling it under his jaw to keep his mouth shut and covering the laces. The very end of it was designed as a flap to cover his mouth, and she considered leaving it unfastened before she remembered that he would probably wake up loud and weepy and wrapped it tightly over his mouth, leaving only his nose and part of his cheeks exposed. The hood was impossible to remove without outside assistance, and Sue felt confident that she had covered all her bases in protecting her identity and preventing any escape attempts.  
   
Sue rolled Kurt onto his side to prevent him from choking to death on his own saliva, and then she left the basement to get on with the rest of her night, shutting off the lights and locking the door behind her.

   
Sue enjoyed a leisurely few hours of plotting out various ways to protest her innocence, and then went to bed almost happy, riding on the feelings of accomplishment and self-confidence that she’d been missing since she’d lost Nationals.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Kurt slowly swam up through a grey fog that obscured his thoughts and weighed down his limbs. He became distantly aware that he was lying on a hard, cold surface, and the discomfort became sharper as the mist cleared from his mind enough for him to begin processing his thoughts. He lifted his arm, but it felt as difficult as if he were in a pool of molasses. His head felt weirdly constricted, and he tried to open his eyes, but they felt like they were glued shut. His lips felt dry, but when he tried to dart his tongue out to moisten them, his jaws refused to part. His heartbeat sped as he began to feel a dull sort of panic, his thought process still cloudy with...What had he done last night? What was going on? He could hear his pulse pounding in his ears, but nothing else.  
   
Kurt dragged his hand along the cold floor beneath him towards his face. It got tangled in what felt like a blanket halfway there, and he had to summon all of his reserves to lift his arm off the floor and rest it on his head. As soon as he had though, he regretted it. Instead of his skin and hair, he found the smoothness of leather.  
   
Kurt whimpered in dismay, and the strange way it sounded in his ears fuelled his fear further. He let his hand flop down onto the floor from his head, and it struck with a painful thud against cement but he couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear anything other than his own breathing, accelerating as the gravity of his predicament became clearer. Kurt dragged his hand back up to his head and forced his other hand up as well, running his shaking fingertips over the surface of the leather, searching for the seams and clumsily trying to dig his fingernails into them.  
   
The most success he had was with the edges around his nose and cheeks, but there was still almost no give to it. Kurt clawed at the smooth surface, digging his fingernails in and feeling more manic and desperate by the second. The adrenaline rushing through his veins was returning some of his lost coordination to him, and he frantically dug his fingers in and tugged. His fingers came away wet, but he couldn’t see to tell if it was blood from where he’d scratched at his own face inadvertently, sweat, or the tears he couldn’t hold back. The tears were the worst. He couldn’t breathe through his tightly covered mouth, and he felt like he couldn’t draw in enough air through his nose to keep up his efforts as he sobbed in panic.  
   
Finally spent, he let himself relax back down onto the floor, and tried to remember what had happened leading up to his current predicament. He vaguely remembered dancing with Blaine, then fighting and Blaine storming off, and then it all came back in a rush. Being grabbed and subdued with such ease by two large men that he may as well have been a toddler, Blaine getting hurt (was he okay he needed to be okay) and then a needle being slipped into his arm, followed quickly by the disorienting sensation of being more scared than he’d ever been before and his body uncontrollably relaxing at the same time.  
   
Kurt’s fit of hysteria was renewed by the sudden return of his memories, and with it came a shot of sudden, do-or-die strength. He pushed himself up to his knees and then pushed off of the wall at his back hard, forcing himself upright. He realized with indignant shock that he was in his sock feet, where were his  _boots_  they had  _no_  right to mess with his clothes- he paused. Were his clothes really the most concerning thing about this? Maybe his dad was right about some of his priorities.  
   
Kurt refocused on the situation at hand: escaping. He managed one small step forward, hands out in front of him and searching for obstacles, but the second step proved his undoing. As Kurt dragged his foot forward, his progress was stopped suddenly by a band around his ankle that he had not noticed, preoccupied as he had been with the leather  _thing_  covering his head. The sudden jerk on his ankle ruined his tenuous balance, and he pitched forward, only to fall into a pair of strong arms that lowered him back to the ground.  
   
Kurt let out a shocked yelp, cut short by his jaw being held shut and his covered mouth. He pushed himself away from the unknown presence, shoving back against the wall and getting his arms out in front to protect himself. He was suddenly acutely aware of how helpless he was against his captor, unable to see or hear him coming and physically unable to put up more than a token defence.  
  
***  
   
When Sue had come down the stairs to the basement the next morning before she had to leave for school, she had not expected to find Porcelain standing unsteadily, blood covering the exposed parts of his face. However, she was Sue Sylvester, and while she didn’t necessarily enjoy surprises, she was never flummoxed by them. Clearly Kurt was not with the program, and had inadvertently damaged himself. This was unacceptable.  
   
When Kurt reached the end of the chain attached to his ankle and fell, Sue stepped forward and caught him, placing him back on the blanket. She was surprised again by Kurt’s reaction to her touch, a muffled shriek of fear mixed with surprise and pushing himself away from her, holding his wavering hands out in front of himself once his back hit the wall. His breathing was fast and she didn’t need to see his face to be able to read the panic he was feeling.  
   
“Honestly, Porcelain, you’re this scared and I’ve barely even touched you,” Sue said in a scornful tone. She was certainly not alarmed by the intensity of his reactions and talking to cover it up. Not even a little. “You’ve hurt yourself more than I’ve hurt you.”  
   
He didn’t respond, unable to hear her talking. He stayed stock still except for the trembling, which was growing more noticeable the longer he held his arms up defensively. Sue rolled her eyes and turned her back on him, digging back into her chest of toys and pulling out the straightjacket. She’d never used it, it had been an impulse buy that she’d purchased online a few months ago, but she was glad she had it now. It would be useful to stop Kurt from inadvertently damaging himself in while attempting to escape. She shook it out and unbuckled the straps.  
   
When Sue turned back to Kurt, his arms were loosely wrapped around himself and his head was lolling to the side. Honestly, children these days were just not very durable at all. She folded the jacket sloppily, dropping it to the floor beside the blanket that Kurt was slowly sinking down onto.  
   
Sue grabbed Kurt’s ankle and undid the cuff, ignoring the weak tugging and muffled whimpering that started up at her touch. He probably needed to use the washroom by now, and Sue was not cleaning up any accidents. She grabbed him underneath his arms and stood him up, being careful to not touch him anymore than necessary. Kurt was uncooperative as she steered him towards the bathroom, and she almost wished than she’d left his ears unplugged so she could at least threaten him into compliance.  
   
It was a relief to drop Kurt onto the toilet seat and back away. He jerked when he realized what he was sitting on, and Sue imagined he was probably flushed with embarrassment underneath the hood and the blood drying on his cheeks from where his nails had torn the skin. She waited patiently, only tapping her foot a little bit as he fumbled at the button of his pants clumsily.  
   
When he was done and Sue was walking him back to the blanket, she realized that he was crying from the weird hitches in his breathing. The hood was tight enough around his cheeks that tears would not escape it, and it was probably uncomfortably damp inside it with all the blubbering he was doing. She lowered Kurt down to the ground, sighing over the effort. Honestly, this was taking a lot more work than she expected. It seemed that humans were much harder to keep in a basement than dogs, and she made a mental note to  _never_  bring Schuester down here, no matter how awful he got. It would not be worth the pain and irritation at all.  
   
When she started wrapping him up in the straightjacket, he didn’t resist at first. Even Sue would admit that it wasn’t as warm in the basement as it could be, and what felt like a large, thick coat would be welcomed by any being lesser than Sue herself after spending a night on that floor. While she was doing the straps up at the back though, he realized that the sleeves had no openings at the end and were very long. She knew that he’d worn a straightjacket before; it had been his less functional version that had inspired her to pick up her own, after all, so it came as no surprise that he recognized the garment relatively quickly and began trying to pull away from her, making small pathetic noises like some sort of dying animal.  
   
Sue easily ignored his efforts, shaking her head at how unpractised he was at escapes, and did up the strap that ran between his legs. Then she caught his arms one at a time, wrapping the sleeves around his torso and attaching them to the jacket.  
   
“Let that be a lesson to you, buddy,” Sue said light-heartedly. “Things can always get worse when you screw around with them.” She pushed Kurt over onto his side, and stood up, brushing off her hands and considering what she should do at school to diffuse people’s suspicions. Fake sympathy? She’d been kind to Porcelain before, and making sad faces would at the very least fool Will. It would also be the kind of reaction that the public expected in a situation like this, and could put her over the top in the polls.  
   
Sue locked the basement door behind her, then pulled up the newspaper online. The top story was titled ‘Local Teen Abducted at Gay Bar’. She smiled. Outstanding. The combination of the revelation that Burt Hummel was allowing his teenage son to frequent seedy bars and Burt being distracted from his campaign by having to deal with the abduction of said son would demolish the momentum of his campaign and leave plenty of room for Sue. She sipped her coffee and clicked through to the story.

  
***  
   
“Tell me you had nothing to do with this, Sue.”  
   
“Well, Curly Sue, first I’m going to need you to elaborate on what particular ‘this’ you’re referring to. I’ve had a lot to do with a lot of things.”  
   
“Fine,” Will snarled through gritted teeth. He sat down across from her at her desk, turning around her Cheerios laptop and opening a browser window, his motions jerky with barely suppressed anger. When he spun it back around, she was looking at the same article she’d read earlier. “This, Sue. Tell me this wasn’t you trying to sabotage Burt’s campaign.”  
   
Sue pulled on her reading glasses and stared at the screen in a good approximation of confusion that turned to surprised dismay as she reread the article. She was a master of that particular facial expression, having been the direct cause of it appearing on other people’s faces many times throughout her life. When she felt she’d stared at the screen long enough, she looked up. Will was staring back at her, as angry as she’d ever seen him.  
   
“Will. I would never- Why would you think I would do something like this? Ever? His boyfriend had to be hospitalized. This is not something I’m capable of.” She knew she had to tread carefully. If she took it too far, he would never buy it. If she wasn’t emotional enough, he wouldn’t believe that she cared if Porcelain was alive or dead, and when she gave the teary public speech about how she just wanted to see Kurt safe again he would definitely smell a rat.  
   
“You can’t deny that you’ve done some terrible things to win, Sue. I saw Blaine this morning; he’s got a minor concussion. He said that the van was there the whole evening, and that he’d left Kurt alone for maybe thirty seconds before he heard the window shatter and Kurt screaming. If it was random, why would they go to all the effort of and take the risk of breaking the window? Kurt had locked himself inside the car, and Blaine was drunk and outside of it. If they just wanted a kid, Blaine was a much safer victim. They wanted Kurt for some reason.  
   
“I talked to Burt, and the only person we could think of who gains from this is you, at least of the people he knows with the resources and ruthlessness to abduct someone. I’ll ask you again, Sue. Was this you?”  
   
Sue summoned the memory of Figgin’s slashing her budget to fuel her righteous fury, allowing it to swell up inside of her. When she spoke, it was in a threatening hiss. “William, I am an educator. My degree may be honorary one, awarded as part of my compensation package after I saved George HW Bush’s life by choreographing an impromptu cheerleading routine so perfect that it cured his cancer back in 1980, but I take it very seriously. Everything I do is ultimately for the children of this school, to give them the tools to cope with the real world once they graduate. I would never deliberately harm one child just because the possible results would lead to a greater good. I never have, and I never will.”  
   
Will stared at her a moment longer, studying her face. “Okay, Sue,” he said finally. “I really don’t know whether to believe you or not, that’s the worst part. I’m going to tell Burt that I don’t think it was you, but I think that the police will probably be contacting you anyway. The only other reason for this that we could think of was that someone was targeting Kurt, not Burt, and I don’t want to think about that.” He shuddered, his anger replaced by distress, then turned and left her office.  
   
When he closed the door behind him, Sue leaned back in her chair, considering what he’d said. She’d slipped up a little, gotten a little too specific in her denial. Kurt’s short-term suffering now would lead to long-term gains for special needs people from all walks of life when she won the election and took over Washington. That was true. She shouldn’t have said it to Will though. He would be watching her closely after that little slip-up, but there was a reason that Sue Sylvester could be filmed punching an elderly woman in the face and not get prosecuted, and that reason was the enormous stack of get out of jail free cards in the form of blackmail and bribery she held over the heads of various people in positions of power.  
   
School that day was quiet. For some reason there were very few students actually present, and she didn’t see a single member of the glee club, which meant that she went a whole day without having to listen to them whining or singing. It was very possibly the best day at school she’d had since Schuester had reformed that ridiculous group.  
   
Cheerios practice had an unexpectedly low turnout. Sue had at least expected the fear her girls had of her to supersede any concern they might have had about being violently kidnapped, and was unpleasantly surprised with how many did not show up at practice time. She noted all who did not show up for suspension of tanning privileges and a date for being yelled at in her office, and went home earlier than usual, in time for the evening news. She poked her head into the basement before turning on the television, and Kurt looked like he was still breathing so she left it at that.  
   
When she flicked on the tv, Andrea had already given the rundown of stories for that night. Rod furrowed his brow in a look of practiced concern, and said, “Thank you Andrea. All those stories and more coming up, but first, our top story.” A picture of a smiling Kurt appeared on screen. “The whereabouts of local teen Kurt Hummel remain unknown. The son of congressional candidate Burt Hummel, Kurt was abducted from the parking lot of ‘Scandals’ late last night in an attack that also put his boyfriend in the hospital with a minor concussion. Witnesses called the police, but they were unable to locate the perpetrators. The investigation is still ongoing, and we will keep you up to date on the details as they unfold.”  
   
Sue stared at the screen in what couldn’t be shock. Maybe it was a slow news day and that was what made Kurt Hummel into the ‘top story’. On screen, Andrea shook her head sadly. “It must be so hard on his family.”  
   
Rod looked at the camera. “That is must be Andrea, that it must be. His family has released a plea for young Kurt’s safe return home, filmed earlier today.” He looked off camera to where Sue knew the director stood, and the image cut to Burt Hummel, with his wife and other kid on either side of him, holding a picture of Kurt.  
   
“Hello, my name is Burt Hummel. You may recognize me as one of the folks running in the congressional special election, but I’m here to talk about my son, Kurt. He’s seventeen, and last night he was abducted. Now, I don’t know why anyone would do that, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t care.” He raised a hand to scrub at his face. “All I care about is getting my little boy home safe. Where ever, whoever you are, I am begging you not to hurt him. To let him go. Please.” His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked mournfully at the camera for a moment until the video feed cut back to the studio.  
   
“Truly awful,” Rod observed. “You don’t expect anything like this to happen so close to home, and yet, here we are, isn’t that right, Andrea?”  
   
“Absolutely Rod. McKinley High School, where Kurt is a senior, was almost deserted today when parents kept their children home. You just don’t expect things like this to happen, and people naturally react with fear.” Andrea paused for a moment, shaking her head mournfully for an instant before her expression brightened again. “We’re going to take a quick break, and when we come back, I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t go outside tonight, even if you aren’t concerned about abduction. I’ll give you a hint, it starts with ‘p’ and ends with ‘rison break’.”  
   
“And I’ll have a story about how kittens and bunny rabbits just don’t mix.” Rod flashed his enormous smile. “We’ll be right back.”  
   
Sue stared at the screen as irritatingly peppy people shilled their products, lost in thought. Kurt shouldn’t be the top news story. It didn’t make any sense. Thinking of Kurt though- Sue abruptly stood up and turned the television off, then grabbed her keys from her pocket and unlocked the basement door. It looked like Kurt hadn’t moved since she’d laid him down that morning, and she sat on the bottom step and observed him for a moment. He was mostly still, but every few moments he would twitch or moan unhappily.  
   
Sue frowned. She hated guilt, and she was feeling the first twinges of it. She reminded herself that she needed to win the election, for the people whose rights she was fighting for and for herself to have a real victory again. Porcelain would be fine, and even if his family seemed very upset, wasn’t that what her aim had been? She had known this was coming from the first moments after the idea had popped into her head.  
   
Resolve renewed, she climbed the stairs and filled a glass with water. Sue Sylvester, like a camel, was more than capable of going days without drinking, but she had learned from her experience with the dog that the drugs she had used tended to dehydrate, and she needed to keep Kurt relatively healthy. She sat him up and, after a slight delay, he jerked in surprise. He had probably been asleep then.  
   
He made a rather pathetic attempt to pull away from her, and she let him flop back onto his side. He breathed heavily and unsteadily but held perfectly still as Sue undid the section of the hood that covered his mouth, then pulled him back up again and held the glass to his lips. She wished that he hadn’t been so ridiculous this morning, because then she could have just handed him the glass and left instead of this parody of a caring gesture.  
   
Kurt drank without hesitation, and Sue once again felt disdain for his obvious lack of natural ability when it came to being held prisoner. She could have put anything in the water and he would have taken it willingly. When the glass was empty, she set it down behind her and took the loose flap of the hood in hand to recover his mouth.  
   
“Please,” Kurt said suddenly, his voice slurred by his inability to hear himself or move his jaw. “Why are you doing this? Please, just let me go.”  
   
Sue patted him on the head, then refastened the hood over his mouth, cutting off his stream of begging. He burst into tears, his body shaking with the force of his sobs.  
   
“You’re so overdramatic, Porcelain,” Sue said as she stood up to leave. “You’re not even hurt. I can’t believe I thought you’d be less whiny than this.” She headed for the stairs, realized that she should probably take him to the bathroom if she didn’t want to be cleaning up a nasty mess, and turned back, grateful that they never had gotten that puppy Jean had wanted when they were little. There was too much to remember to do. This was taking more effort than she had expected, and it had better put her back in front in the polls.  
  
***  
   
The next day at school was even better for her than the last had been. Sue had thought that a day without the glee kids at school would be impossible to top, but there it was. Most of them were back, with the exception of Hudson and Kurt’s mini-Schuester boyfriend, but instead of singing in the halls they were sad and subdued. The cherry on top of her perfect day was overhearing a conversation between the Beiste and Irma, as they debated whether to merely postpone or cancel altogether the musical.  
   
“Our male lead’s just been released from the hospital, Emma,” Beiste said gruffly, “and his understudy, who also happens to be his boyfriend, is missing. There’s no way he’s going to be able to go on stage tonight, and I don’t know if he’ll be able to ever if Hummel isn’t found safe. We have to postpone, that’s a given, but we also have to be prepared to cancel the show. This whole thing is really hard on the kids.”  
   
Emma frowned. “Let’s give it some time. We’ll push the opening back, but Kurt would want the show to go on with or without him. We should talk to the kids and find out what they think before we consider cancellation.”  
   
“Alright, Emma, we’ll do it your way for now. I guess you have known these kids longer than me, after all.” Beiste shrugged, and then Sue had to leave the room because a smile, an actual smile, was threatening to form on her face.  
   
That night, the police showed up at her house. “Good evening, Mrs. Sylvester,” John said with a polite smile on his face. “It’s lovely to see you again. We’re investigating the abduction of Kurt Hummel from the parking lot of Scandals the other night? We were wonder if we could ask a few questions. May we come in?”  
   
“I’d rather you didn’t, to be honest, John. I’ve just been resetting my booby traps, and there’s a very real possibility that one of you could lose your leg.” Both officers looked uneasy at that, John’s friendly smile falling off his face. Sue stepped outside and closed the door. “How can I help you? I just feel awful about poor Kurt. He’s one of my favourite students.”


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Saturday was when people outside of Lima started paying attention to Kurt Hummel’s status. Local news media covering the story was one thing, but then national news outlets started talking about it. There was a “Bring Kurt Home Safe” group on Facebook that had more members every time Sue looked at it. Liberal news media shook their heads sadly over the obvious homophobia of small town America manifesting itself in violence once again. Fox News ran a story on how Burt Hummel was clearly an unfit parent, having somehow raised a gay child in a town as wholesome as Lima. It also focused on the fact that Kurt had been leaving a gay bar he was in illegally when he was abducted, and suggested that he was at fault for being there. By the end of the story, they’d repeated ‘gay’ so often it didn’t even sound like a word.  
   
The media firestorm that this was turning into was good publicity for the election, but wasn’t doing very much for Sue. The enormous outpouring of sympathy would probably push Burt even higher in the polls, but there was enough time before the election for the public to lose interest again, and with him focusing on his missing child rather than canvassing door to door, his campaign would grind to a halt. At least Sue had to keep telling herself that, because there was a reason that she had never wanted children, and that reason was that taking care of someone who whined every time they spoke was  _annoying_  and it had better pay off or she was going to sell him into slavery in the salt mines after the election was over.  
   
Kurt wasn’t making it any easier for her either. She’d gotten around to cleaning the blood off his face today, and he’d just trembled in fear the entire time. She was all for people having a healthy fear of her, but he panicked every time she touched him, and as little as she enjoyed it, she had to touch him quite often to take care of him. Sue vaguely wondered if being afraid all of the time could lead to heart problems, what with the family history. The last thing she needed was another corpse to dispose of.  
   
Sue knew that Kurt wouldn’t be so afraid if he knew where he was and with who. Otto and Andre both cut imposing figures and were the last people he’d seen before being blindfolded. Forcing him to stay quiet after Sue let him go was problematic though. He would be angry, very angry. He cared about his father more than anything, Sue could relate to that, and would be upset about the stress that it would put on his heart. Otto and Andre had perhaps been unnecessarily rough with his boyfriend when they grabbed Kurt and he’d tried to stop them. Add to that how scared he had obviously been, and even Sue probably would not be able to persuade him to not tell the police exactly who had kidnapped him.   
   
Sue was pulled suddenly from her thoughts by a series of crashes from behind the basement door. She unlocked the door quickly to find Kurt lying at the bottom of the stairs, lying perfectly still and limp.  
   
Sue’s heart stuttered in her chest in horror, and she sprung into action, rushing down the stairs to kneel beside him. Now that she was closer, she could see his pulse fluttering in his throat, and he was still breathing. She let out a sigh of relief. She  _really_ hadn’t wanted to deal with body disposal.  
   
She glanced over at the blanket and the abandoned ankle cuff. It was still locked, but his sock was off on that foot and there were numerous still-bloody abrasions on his foot. He’d been desperate enough to escape what he thought was going to happen to him that he’d pulled his foot through the cuff. Sue reached a decision. She carefully unlatched and unwound the hood, moving Kurt as little as she could in case of a neck injury. His eyes were closed when she pulled it off and tossed it aside. He should not have been unconscious for so long unless he’d received what would be fatal head trauma, and Sue examined him closer.  
   
Kurt was not unconscious. He was playing possum, possibly because he was afraid he was going to die, but it was also possible that he was biding his time to make an escape attempt. Had he fallen down the stairs at all? Sue peeled the wax off his ears and pulled out the cotton batting.  
   
Sue flicked Kurt on the nose. “Did you actually fall, Porcelain, or did you fake that like you’re faking being unconscious? Not your best work.”  
   
Kurt’s eyes opened to tiny slits, and he said “Coach?” in a quiet, betrayed sounding tone and squinted up at her. He squirmed around inside the straightjacket, but quickly stilled with a tiny cry of pain.  
   
“You did fall, then,” Sue observed. “Where does it hurt?”  
   
 Kurt stared at her for an instant, before his Cheerios conditioning to ‘always answer Coach, you won’t like what happens if you don’t’ kicked in. “My arm. My head. I heard a crack when I landed on my arm, I think, but then my head hit the ground and I’m not really sure anymore.” His face was pale and damp, the cuts from his fingernails standing out starkly. Sue reached around the back his head to check for a neck injury, checking his vertebrae for obvious damage. Kurt’s eyes stayed fixed on her face, pupils huge and uneven and his mouth hanging open slightly.  
   
Sue finally broke the silence when she’d confirmed as best she could without an x-ray that his neck wasn’t broken. “How bad is your head?”  
   
“I feel dizzy and sick when I try to move it, and it’s pounding,” he said quietly. He paused for a moment as Sue ran her fingers through his hair, damp and gross from two days of the hood covering it, to check for open wounds, then visibly gathered himself up to ask, “Coach, what’s going on? Where am I?”  
   
She ignored him, and once she’d found no bloody cuts on his head, moved to unbuckle the straightjacket. “Coach Sylvester, please, why am I here?” Kurt asked, his voice getting higher with hysteria as she continued to ignore him. “Answer me!” he demanded, sitting up slightly with the force he put into it. As soon as he moved, his face went gray and he slumped back down, heaving with the effort to not throw up. Then the waterworks started up again as he began to cry quietly, shaking under her hands.  
   
“Porcelain, stop that. You’ve got an obvious concussion, you won’t remember this in eight hours anyway so there’s no point in telling you anything. I’m not going to hurt you, your actions are the only reason you’re hurt right now. If you’d just cooperated from the start, you’d be fine and everything would’ve been easier.”  
   
Instead of soothing him, he just cried harder, for some ridiculous reason, and Sue wondered why she was even trying. She started stripping him out of the straightjacket, ignoring him except to say, “You’re going to make yourself throw up, you know, and you’ll have no one to blame except yourself.”  
   
Sure enough, within minutes, he’d managed to jostle his head enough with his shaking to start heaving, and Sue was forced to roll him onto his side, aggravating his head further, so he wouldn’t choke on it. She hoped it was the concussion making him this stupid, but it was possible that all the close proximity to hair gel he had from spending so much time with mini-Schuester had leached his intelligence. At least having him on his side gave her better access to the straps and she had him out of the jacket in a matter of minutes. His left forearm was swelling already, probably broken. Damn.  
   
Kurt’s eyes fluttered closed when he was done throwing up. Fortunately he’d had almost nothing in his stomach, so it would be a short cleanup. Sue gently probed at the swollen area of his arm, and he jerked away from her sharply, whimpering in pain at both the contact and the movement. Sue leaned in to hold him still so she could examine him, and accidently caught a whiff of his odour. Two days of lying down in the same clothes had not done him any favours in the not-smelling-like-a-nasty-teenager department, and Sue pulled away in disgust.  
   
“Well, Porcelain,” Sue said, “it’s beginning to look like locking a person in one’s basement is an entirely more complex proposition than locking up a dog. That’s fine though, we’re just having some early hiccups. I’m sure by the time of the election we’ll have this all worked out.” Kurt didn’t respond except to moan and clutch at his forehead with his uninjured arm. He didn’t resist when Sue picked him up, but he did heave helplessly when she jostled his head. Sue carried him into the small basement bedroom, laying him down on his side on the bed. The bedroom had originally been built so she could offer it to relatives to encourage them to find a hotel instead should they come to visit, but it would be handy to make him feel more comfortable and less likely to try to escape.  
   
The basement was windowless, at least. Porcelain wasn’t going anywhere, even if he managed to slip his bonds again. Sue reattached the cuff, this time to the bed frame and the foot Kurt hadn’t injured trying to escape. Kurt’s breathing was steadying, and he blinked lazily up at her, eyes unfocused.  
   
“Go to sleep, Kurt.” Sue almost didn’t recognize her own voice. Was that guilt in her tone? Why? He was the one who’d tried to climb stairs blind and without the use of his arms, she hadn’t even pushed him. She ignored the niggling little voice that reminded her that she was the one who’d scared him badly enough that he’d felt the need to.  
   
She sat down in the hard-backed chair in the corner, watching for signs of his condition worsening. She wanted to drug him, to supplement the hard knock to the head he’d taken in preventing him from remembering any of the last ten minutes, but that would probably kill him. She’d have to take the chance that he wouldn’t remember anything when he awoke. Kurt’s eyes stayed fixed on her until they closed and didn’t open again, his breathing smoothing out and deepening as he fell asleep.  
   
***  
   
Kurt awoke warm, but with sharp pain in his head and arm. He was off the floor, and onto what felt like a low quality mattress, but he didn’t know when or how it had happened. He remembered the cold, how hungry and thirsty he’d gotten, the humiliation of the bathroom visits, the boredom interspersed with terror whenever his captor touched him but not what had happened between lying on the floor waiting for something to happen and awakening on a bed. He didn’t know what those men had wanted when they grabbed him, but they’d left him mostly alone for so long. And now he was on a bed. And he still didn’t know what they wanted from him.  
   
He tried to roll over; he felt exposed laying there on his back. He was prevented from rolling by his torso being pinned to the bed somehow, holding him on his back. He was still in the straightjacket, and he struggled uselessly against it, but jerked in surprise when his arms rubbed against each other. His left arm was encased in a cast. Something had happened, but he couldn’t remember. How could he not remember getting a cast?  
   
Kurt still couldn’t see, but he suddenly realized that he could hear again as the jacket rustled in his ears with the sounds of his struggling. His mouth was also unrestrained and he realized with a sudden sick horror that his hair was damp and his skin felt clean. Someone had bathed him while he was unconscious. Kurt whimpered before he could hold it in, then drew in a quick breath and held it to keep quiet. He listened closely to his surroundings, needing to know if there was someone there watching him at that moment. That had been the worst part of not being able to see or hear, not knowing if he was alone or if there was someone there watching him.  
   
He couldn’t hear anyone. “Hello?” he said hesitantly, hating the way his voice trembled. He had dealt with bad situations before, and he was not going to cry again. He had done entirely too much crying since the parking lot of Scandal’s, and he was done. His dad’s voice echoed in his head:  _No one pushes the Hummels around_. He took a deep breath and tried again. “Hello? Is anyone there?” Better. His voice was steady, and he was still scared, but he didn’t sound like it anymore. There was still no answer though.  
   
He absently moved his arms to a more comfortable position, but was reminded of why that was a bad idea when pain shot up his casted arm. He gasped and bit his lip, freezing in place. He slowly finished moving, and relaxed when he felt the pain recede. He lay there for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut to try and alleviate his headache, which was pounding to the rhythm of the Party Rock Anthem at the base of his skull.  
   
A door opened, followed by the sounds of someone descending a set of stairs. Okay. He was downstairs somewhere. Okay, he could add that to the absolutely nothing that he knew about what was going on except that there had been three of them at first. A door nearby creaked as it opened, and Kurt called out, “Hello?” His voice was tremulous again and he cursed himself for showing his weaknesses over and over.  
   
No one answered him, but Kurt could hear him moving around the room. A sudden burst of anger came over him, and he lifted himself up until he was straining against the strap around his chest. “Hey! Hey! You can’t ignore me forever! Why are you doing this? Where am I? Who are you?!” he shouted, then collapsed back against the mattress when pain shot through his head and fireworks appeared in front of his eyes.  
   
   
A gloved hand gripped the back of his head and tipped it up, and Kurt felt the threading of the neck of a bottle of water against his lips. He growled in frustration at the lack of response to his questions and stubbornly kept his lips shut despite the how thirsty he was. He needed answers more. The person holding his head exhaled, and that was all the warning he had before his head was dropped back to the mattress unexpectedly and the bottle was tilted up, cool water splashing all over his face, running up his nose and soaking the blindfold.  
   
Kurt sputtered in surprise, and then choked and gasped as the water hit his sinuses painfully. He twisted his face to the side as far as he could so the water would flow out of his nostrils, but as quickly as the water had begun splashing all over his face, it was gone, and he heard quick footsteps and then the slamming of a door as his captor left. He listened for the sounds of stair climbing, and relaxed as he heard them, followed quickly by the slamming of a door.  
   
He rubbed his wet face into the mattress and forced his breathing to steady. He knew that he was in a basement. He knew that whoever was holding him there had a quick temper and fast reactions. He had been carefully silent while in Kurt’s presence, so maybe he was worried about Kurt figuring out who he was? Kurt wracked his brain, trying to think of a reason that someone would abduct him, break his arm, hit him on the head and then clean him up, treat his injuries and offer him water. It didn’t make any sense.  
   
The pounding in Kurt’s head was getting worse, and his arm ached fiercely. He sighed, then relaxed into the mattress. There was nothing he could do, so he may as well try for rest and think about escaping when he felt better. The remnants of water up his nose tickled uncomfortably, and he hummed to distract himself from it while he slowly drifted off into sleep.  
   
***  
   
Kurt had woken up, and he didn’t remember anything. Of everything that Sue had hoped for last night, this was the best possible scenario. He hadn’t died, and the concussion had erased his memory of seeing her. Everything was still coming up Sue, even if Kurt was being a stubborn brat. He would learn.  
   
Sue glanced outside. There was a light dusting of snow coming down, but that would just add a new dimension of excitement to her drive when she went grocery shopping. Usually Imelda did it for her, but it was probably for the best if Imelda didn’t enter the house right now. Sue paid her quite well to keep her mouth shut, but judging by people’s reactions to Kurt’s situation Sue likely couldn’t pay her enough to keep it quiet.  
   
She went through the kitchen door into the garage, starting her Le Car and pulling out into the light Sunday morning traffic. The parking lot at the Wal-Mart was only about a third full, and Sue heaved a sigh that she wouldn’t get to push through hapless shoppers on that trip. Black Friday was Sue’s favourite shopping day of the year. She rarely bought anything, but the experience was exhilarating. In comparison, this shopping trip would be boring in every sense of the word.  
   
Sue was nearly finished filling her cart when she saw Becky and her mother. Becky had been one of the many Cheerios absent on Thursday, but she’d also been absent on Friday. Sue pushed her cart over to where they were looking at milk and said, “Hello Becky, hello Donna. Fancy seeing you here.”  
   
“Hi Coach,” said Becky glumly. Sue looked down at her in confusion, then to Donna for an explanation.  
   
“I was going to call you tomorrow morning, Sue,” Donna began, “but it’s just as well that we can do this face-to-face. I’m pulling Becky off the Cheerios for a little while. I’m nervous about having her spending too much time with you after what happened to Kurt Hummel. The news is implying that it may have had something to do with the election, and I can’t have her targeted if that person tries to come after you in the same way. I hope you understand?” She finished questioningly, but there was a note of finality in her tone.  
   
Sue was taken aback. This is was not something that she had anticipated. She realized suddenly that Becky and her mother were both looking at her expectantly, and she cleared her throat to stall for a few seconds so she could formulate a response. “Of course,” she said finally. “The safety of your child must come first. I hadn’t even considered that I may have put Becky in danger, and I apologize.” She turned from Donna to Becky, kneeling down to be on her level. “Becky,” she said seriously, “as soon as the election is over, you are welcome back to the Cheerios. Until then, your mother is absolutely right that your safety is more important than me having my head Cheerio.”

   
Becky nodded, but was still pouting. Sue stood back up and said, “Well, don’t let me keep you from your shopping any longer. Be safe driving, it’s getting ugly out there.”  
   
Sue was rather proud of her self control. She completed her shopping trip and closed the curtains before she had lost her temper, keeping her voice down so Kurt wouldn’t hear and identify her, but smashing several of her less impressive trophies against the floor with satisfying crashes. The media had made the connection between Burt’s campaign and his son’s abduction. Sue knew that she was probably the prime suspect, and she didn’t intend to be caught.  
   
When Sue had calmed down, she considered the current state of affairs. She’d been so involved in taking care of Kurt that she’d been neglecting her campaign, but that could be a good thing, voters could see her backing off as a sign of respect rather than of guilt. She wasn’t terribly worried about the police, but the story getting so big meant that voters were thinking about Burt Hummel and not her at the moment, and that was unacceptable. The fact that Kurt had been out at a gay bar illegally had not been the focus of any story since that one on Fox News. Maybe Sue just needed to give them some time to get over the ‘look at the poor missing high school student’ and get back into tabloid mode. The media these days always did, after all.  
   
Sue turned on the television. She would continue to leave the election on the back burner. She had plenty of time to wait for the sympathy to die down before she started on her campaign full steam again. She changed the channel to CNN, they were usually grotesquely liberal in their slant but Sue needed to know what the enemy was doing.  
   
“And now,” the announcer said pretentiously, “a preview of a one hour special airing tomorrow night only on CNN. Kurt Hummel, seventeen years old.” Video of Kurt singing onstage with the Warblers last year at Regionals played silently in the background as the announcer continued. “His father is running for Congress in the special election for Ohio’s Fourth District. He’s running for student council president and is a founding member of the glee club at McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, openly gay, and last Wednesday night he was abducted while out with his boyfriend. Police currently believe that his abduction is related to his father’s campaign, and we’ll have the full rundown of all the major players in the election race, as well as exclusive interviews with his friends and family. Find out who stands to gain with Kurt Hummel out of the way and how his abduction is affecting the people who love him. Tune in tomorrow at eight, seven central, to be the most up to date on this unfolding situation.”  
   
Sue stared at the television. As the announcer had said “full rundown of major players”, her own picture had been shown onscreen. After tomorrow night, it wouldn’t be just Will Schuester who suspected her. She’d have to move fast to stay ahead of them. She had successfully turned away the police once already. They would be more insistent on coming inside if they came again.  
   
One thing was certain. Kurt couldn’t be in her basement in the unlikely event that the police came back with a warrant. Sue would have to move him. She didn't have any place to keep him that saw less traffic than her house, though, so she'd have to carefully consider all of her options. She'd also have to keep him quiet, and that could be a challenge. She turned off the television and leaned back in her chair contemplatively. She had a lot of work to do before tomorrow night.


	4. Chapter 4

Monday morning, five days after being thrown headfirst into a car and hospitalized, Blaine Anderson stared up at the outer facade of McKinley High. He didn’t want to go inside. He had a lingering headache, and he had never gone through a day there without seeing Kurt. Rachel would probably let him hang out with her, but Finn didn’t like him and if Finn was there today Rachel would be with him the whole day so he couldn’t hang out with her and oh god he was crying again why was he crying again.  
   
A hand touched his shoulder gently, and he spun around to see Mike and Tina looking at him with concern. Tina lifted her hand back to his bicep. “Blaine, are you okay?” Blaine just shrugged, not trusting himself to speak. “Do you need to go home? We could give you a ride,” she offered gently.  
   
“No-,” Blaine’s voice cracked and he cleared his throat before speaking again. “No, no, my parents said I had to go to school today. The doctor said it was okay, so...” he trailed off and spread his hands.  
   
Tina’s brow furrowed in concern, and she was about to speak when Mike cut her off. “Um, you could hang out with us if you wanted? I know you usually spend all your time with Kurt and what happened really sucks, and you’re obviously pretty upset, so if you wanted to talk about it, you could.”  
   
That was more words than Blaine had ever heard out of Mike, and he stared for a moment in disbelief. Tina looked at Mike as well, and he blushed slightly under the scrutiny. Tina recovered from her surprise first, and ran her hand down Blaine’s arm to grab his hand. “Yeah, you can hang out with us if you want. And if you do want to talk or anything, this really sucks for all of us but we weren’t there when it happened and you were and Mike and I are really good listeners.” She finished in a rush of words, and then looked up at him expectantly, eyes wide.  
   
Blaine looked back and forth between their faces, not seeing a trace of anything besides sympathy. “Thanks, you guys,” he finally managed past the lump in his throat. “I appreciate it. Maybe we could talk later? I’m not sure what I’d say.”  
   
Mike and Tina nodded, and Tina kept a firm grip on Blaine’s hand on one side and Mike’s on the other and led the way up the stairs to the front door. Before they entered the school, Tina turned to him and said, “It’s going to be okay, Blaine, I know it.” Mike nodded emphatically in agreement over Tina’s shoulder, and together they turned and entered the school.  
   
The first four periods of school passed in a blur. Blaine couldn’t concentrate, and even Puck seemed to be paying more attention to geometry than he was. Ms. Corcoran didn’t call him on it though, and Blaine spent the class like he had the three previous ones: replaying Wednesday night in his head, trying to fix it, and wondering where Kurt was, if he was okay, if he was scared.  
   
He followed Mike to the cafeteria blindly, ignoring the whispers of people as they gossiped about Kurt that hushed when people noticed him. Tina caught up to them at Mike’s locker, and Blaine looked at her desperately. She had said that it was going to be okay, but Blaine felt like he was going to drop dead where he stood of guilt and grief.  
   
Tina looked back at him, and seemed to understand. “How about we skip the cafeteria and go to the choir room? It should be empty.”  
   
The choir room was dark and empty when they got there. Apparently not even Rachel felt like singing today. They closed the doors to get some privacy and set up three chairs in a tight triangle. When they were settled, Blaine looked down at his hands, tightly clasped in his lap.

   
He didn’t know where to start. “They broke the window of my mom’s car,” he blurted out suddenly. “The cops said that they had ceramic spark plug tips, and I guess those shatter windows when they hit them. They broke the window, and they dragged him out, and he was so  _scared_  you guys, he was screaming for help and he needed it because I left him alone and I couldn’t help him, I couldn’t even slow them down so someone else could help him and we had a fight because I’m the worst boyfriend ever and-,” he broke off, trying to take a deep breath to calm down but breaking down into sobs instead.  
   
Tina reached over to him and pulled him into her chest as he cried. He was vaguely aware of Mike rubbing his back in gentle circles. He gathered himself up to finish explaining but only got as far as, “They broke the window of the car and my parents care more about having to replace it than Kurt getting  _abducted_  and I can’t even be upset at my own house because I think my dad hopes that they won’t find him and I can’t handle this at all.” Blaine pulled away from Tina and buried his face in his hands, sucking in deep gulps of air to try to keep from sobbing again.

   
Tina waited patiently until Blaine had his breathing under control. Mike kept his hand on Blaine’s back, warm and steady through Blaine’s cardigan, until he was finally steady enough to sit back up, wiping at his eyes and sniffling. Tina’s eyes were filled with tears, and Mike looked upset too. Blaine was sharply reminded that Kurt had been their friend long before the two of them had even met. He bit his lip in sudden shame for unloading everything he felt onto their shoulders when they were already dealing with what could be the loss of a friend.  
   
“Blaine, I’m sure that Kurt isn’t blaming you for this,” Tina said quietly. “It’s not your fault.”  
   
“I’m really sorry for this, guys,” Blaine said, desperately trying to backpedal. This was his fault. For some reason, they weren’t angry that Blaine had let Kurt down so badly, but he knew they would be if he told them why Kurt had been angry. He had to fight down the sudden masochistic urge to tell them exactly what had happened between them so they would be as angry at him as he was with himself. What finally stopped him from spilling everything was the thought that Kurt would probably be upset that his private business was being spread around even more than it already had been if he told them about what he’d done. He settled for ending the conversation. “I know this is hard for you too, and I feel better, so thanks.” Blaine made a show of checking his watch, and leaned back in his chair. “We should probably go to class now.”  
   
Blaine and Tina split off from Mike at the choir room doors, since their next classes were in opposite directions. As they headed to class, Blaine happened to glance into Sue Sylvester’s office through the open door. She had looked up at him, and their eyes met for a moment. Blaine knew that she was running against Kurt’s dad in the election, but he suddenly remembered all the stories Kurt had told him about her- pushing the director of Aural Intensity down a set of stairs, the lengths she had gone to for sabotage and what he had seen with his own eyes- punching that woman in the face at Regionals, the implicit threat that her mere presence was to students at McKinley- and his blood ran cold.  
   
He shook his head slightly. No, he was jumping to conclusions. She was a person who would do and had done anything to win, but Kurt had always spoken of her as if he was vaguely fond of her. She wouldn’t have, couldn’t have had anything to do with Wednesday night. He tore his gaze away from hers and hurried after Tina.  
   
***  
   
Sue glanced up from her paperwork just in time to meet the tearstained eyes of Kurt’s boyfriend. Honestly? Crying at school? No wonder Porcelain was so fond of him; they’re essentially the same person. She held his gaze coolly, and he stared wide-eyed for a moment before lowering his gaze and hurrying off. She wondered what Will had said to him about her the day after the incident in the parking lot that he was so afraid. Even if William had said nothing, though, the CNN special airing tonight would likely ensure that little Blair would have more concrete reasons to be afraid of her tomorrow. At least she no longer had to worry about her house being searched, if only because there was nothing left to find there.  
   
Sue continued to leaf through the papers, occasionally pausing to carefully fill in a blank. When she was sure that all of her parental consent forms were perfectly in order, she returned them to the filing cabinet and stretched her back, working out the kinks from holding the same position for so long.  
   
Sue suppressed a yawn. She’d been up since very early that morning, taking care of things and cleaning out her basement, and had stayed up late last night preparing for the firestorm that the special would create. She didn’t truly expect that it would finger her as the main suspect, that would be slander (because even though she had done it, they didn’t know for sure) but there was enough about Sue Sylvester in the public domain that she could conceivably be characterized as a threat to public safety, and be made into a safe target for all the ‘concerned parents’ and the like who were worried about the safety of their own children in Lima.  
   
Sue spent the rest of the afternoon puttering around school, keeping an ear open for rumours. William hadn’t been interested in engaging in conversation with her, oddly enough, instead he had glanced at her and continued on his way. She had thought that she had mostly fooled him, but he seemed angry with her, so maybe he was less naive than she thought. She heard the glee club singing again in last period, and it sounded like both Schuester’s and Corcoran’s groups were together in the choir room. It wasn’t happy singing though, so she took some solace in that.  
   
After the final dismissal bell rang and students had mostly cleared out, Sue closed and locked her office door and shut the blinds. She’d been having a bit of a dry spell, so to speak, and in the last three years or so had brought only two men up to the secret room behind and above her office- Bryan Ryan and Rod Remington. Ryan had skipped town, and Remington was a flake. It was highly unlikely that either of them were going to give testimony to the police about the room, and as an added bonus, it was nearly soundproof. Sue had no desire to have the students hear her having relations, after all. The fact that she had originally built the room in case of nuclear war breaking out meant that it was equipped with a bed and toilet, both of which were very handy.  
   
It had been a pain transporting Kurt. The police were not very good at surveillance, but they were attempting it anyway, and Sue had had to be very sneaky. Fortunately, being sneaky was one of the myriad things that she had a natural talent for.  
   
Removing all traces of Kurt from her basement had been the easy part. Her garage was accessible from inside the house, and it was a simple matter of drugging him and steering him up the stairs and into the trunk. He’d been woozy with pain from his broken arm and concussion, and the pain medication had pushed him right over the edge into suggestible. He was continuing to get weaker though, even though he was no longer on the floor. She’d been reluctant to hand feed him, that was taking it just a little too far with the whole caregiver thing, but it had been about five days since Kurt had last eaten, and it was probably getting dangerous. If she fed him, and maybe gave him a drink more often, his condition would improve.  
   
She’d loaded up everything she needed in the backseat, and then driven to school early, before anyone would be there. The police had tailed her, but it was easy enough to casually shake them. Sue had lots of practice getting away from the police. She only had about two minutes at McKinley before they found her again, but by then Otto, dressed as a janitor, had wrapped Kurt in a blanket, removed him from her trunk and taken him to her office, avoiding the one real camera that watched the front doors and ignoring the fake ones. It wasn’t like it was her first time smuggling something into McKinley High, after all.  
   
Sue opened the thick door to find Kurt exactly as she’d left him that morning; not a surprise, since she had tied him down to the bed rather securely. That straightjacket was more useful than she had ever expected, since it also doubled as a sling for Kurt’s broken arm. He moaned slightly when he heard her footsteps, obviously still out of it from the sedation she’d had to use in order to move him safely. Good. A drugged Kurt was a pliant Kurt, and Sue didn’t feel like wasting time while he decided whether or not to actually drink the water today.  
   
Sue twisted the cap off of a water bottle, and paused for a moment to actually look at Kurt. She couldn’t see his eyes to tell for certain if he was conscious or not, but the way his lower lip was trembling seemed to indicate that he was at least semi-awake. He looked worse than she had ever seen him, paler than usual, facial features slack with either fear or drugs and his limbs were twitching occasionally, apparently at random.  
   
Sue resolved to be a better caregiver and held the water bottle to Kurt’s lips, tilting his head up for him with a hand at the base of his skull. Quicker than she’d expected, Kurt let his lips part. He must have really not wanted a repeat of yesterday’s water-dumped-all-over-his-face incident. Sue slowly poured the water into his mouth as he swallowed, his throat working hard to not choke in the uncomfortable looking position. It was a tedious process, and Kurt did gag once or twice, but eventually the bottle was empty. Sue unwrapped a granola bar and held it up to his lips.  
   
When he realized that he was being fed, he ate as quickly as she would allow him, with a desperation that made her cringe to see. Sue hated shows of weakness, in herself and in others, and Kurt just kept baring his throat. She fed him several more granola bars, and then another bottle of water. Kurt regained coordination as the effects of the drugs wore off, and Sue finished the second bottle of water by pushing a pill to the back of his mouth and chasing it down with water. Before the drugs made it impossible for him to stand, she took Kurt to the toilet so he could relieve himself for the night and then strapped him back to the bed, readjusting and tightening his blindfold.  
   
Kurt was silent from the time she entered the room up until she had shoved the pill down his throat, at first presumably from the drugs that were so slow to wear off, then from Sue keeping his mouth full in an effort to be done as fast as possible. However, he was also more passive than Sue had ever seen him, which was odd. As Sue turned to go, he finally spoke, but it was just barely murmured nonsense, his voice already drowsy as the drugs took effect again.  
   
Sue turned and left him there, locking the door behind her and leaving the school quickly in a rush to get home and continue preparations. It was gently snowing again, and it would probably not stay cold enough for it not to melt, but there was a bite to the air that hadn’t been there even that morning, the promise that winter would come soon.  
   
***  
   
 _They have nothing_ , Sue repeated to herself.  _You covered your tracks. They have nothing._  
   
The CNN special was rather damning, to say the least. Sue was disappointed in the angle they’d taken on the whole situation, Kurt being a delicate little angel in a ruthless world certainly wasn’t what she would have chosen as the main theme were she in their shoes. At least she had looked as fantastic as ever, even if she didn’t even remember doing some of the things that they had footage of. When had she browbeaten a shop assistant at Sheets’n’Things until he cried like a baby?  
   
That background on her family was uncalled for, though. Yes, her parents were famous Nazi hunters, but that didn’t mean that they’d taught her the skills necessary to abduct a teenager in a ruthless blitz attack. That had been all Sue. Yes, her older sister, the person she loved most in the world, had passed away recently. That didn’t mean that she was possibly dangerously unstable because she was all alone in the world, no matter what the show had carefully skirted around saying outright.  
   
The special wrapped up with a final segment of the interview Burt had done. “I’m suspending my campaign to focus on my family, but my values and platform remain the same. If the people of Ohio want me to represent them, I am still their man. That is what Kurt would demand of me if he was sitting beside me right now, but since he isn’t, all I can do is try to be as brave as he believes me to be and carry on.”  
   
The closing remarks of the host were clear and concise. “No one, save the people who took him, knows where Kurt Hummel is. His family and friends are devastated, and the entire town of Lima, Ohio is reeling in shock that such a violent crime took place in their home. However, if the perpetrators’ objective was to force Burt Hummel to pull out of the Congressional race, their tactics have backfired. Pre-election surveys show that Mr. Hummel is sky-rocketing in the polls, and in fact, in the forty-eight hours since we began interviews for this program, he took first place in opinion polls. Speaking to the man, though, it became obvious that his only desire is not political power, but instead what all of America is praying for: his son, home safe. For CNN, I’m Sarah Goodchild. Goodnight.”  
   
Sue turned off the television, pressing down on the remote control’s buttons harder than necessary. She sat in the newly darkened room, and carefully considered her next move.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

If Saturday had been when ‘The Kurt Hummel Story’ had gone national, Tuesday was when it exploded. Major newspapers ran stories that dissected every minute detail of Wednesday night and the election campaigns preceding it. People called into radio talk shows, demanding to know why Sue was allowed to teach. Sue considered calling in herself and saying Sue Sylvester was allowed to teach because she was a winner, and she was the only hope the children of McKinley had of having their potential ripped to the surface and exploited. Ultimately, she decided against it, since being on hold while the host worked through the queue to her was a huge waste of her time.  
   
When she backed out of her garage, English Bulldog guy was shovelling his walk. He stared at her suspiciously, as always, but there seemed to be a new dimension of anger in his expression. Interesting, but ultimately irrelevant, Sue decided, pushing it to the back of her mind and driving off.  
   
Sue was, as always, one of the first people at school. She liked to plan her day without the sounds of teenagers staging open warfare in the hallways drifting in, and she also thought she should probably check on Kurt if she was going to keep her resolution to feed and water him more often.  
   
Kurt was asleep when she opened the door to the tiny room, twitching spasmodically and whimpering as he dreamt. Sue flicked him on the nose with her forefinger until he had stopped whining and just lay there trembling. His skin was cool and clammy to the touch, and the back of his head was damp with sweat when she slid a hand underneath it to help him drink. As he gulped at the water, Sue noted that he had apparently given up struggling, which was nice. It would make everything much easier.  
   
She fed him a few more granola bars, they weren’t exactly healthy but she was fairly limited in her choices of food to things that were easy and fast to hand feed to a blindfolded teenager strapped to a bed. She tipped her head to the side, and reconsidered. If she sat him up, feeding him would be much easier. As she took him to the bathroom, she was pleased that they were so close to finding a rhythm. Kurt wasn’t a good prisoner in the sense that he was going to stage a daring escape that didn’t end in a fall down the stairs, but he was pretty good in the sense that all Sue had had to do was blindfold and drug him for a week and he was fairly docile. All in all, despite that CNN special, everything seemed to be working out.  
   
***  
   
Nothing was working out. News traveled fast at McKinley, and even if only a few students and staff had actually watched the special, more had seen the news this morning, and rumours had spread like wildfire. Before lunch, Sue had heard rumours that she had been seen carrying Kurt into the van and that she had bribed the police to stay out of prison. Sue wasn’t sure if she was be more offended that students actually thought she would be so clumsy or that they thought bribing the police was a new tactic for her. She preferred blackmail, but even she didn’t always have dirt or the time to manufacture it.  
   
The students weren’t the only ones who were gossiping that day, either. When Sue strolled into the teacher’s lounge it fell absolutely silent, eerily reminiscent of the “Let’s Get Physical” incident, except instead of breaking out into laughter, they stayed silent. Sue finished filling her cup and slowly turned around to face them. Every one of them was staring at her quietly, anger on some faces, while others were perfectly neutral.  
   
“Let’s get one thing straight,” Sue said loudly and calmly. Several teachers jumped in surprise. “I would like to categorically deny any accusations that you may be harbouring that I had anything to do with what happened to Kurt Hummel. What happened is awful, and I had nothing to do with it. Any questions?” The room was so quiet, she could hear William’s hair creaking as it tried to rustle in the slight draft from the door. “No? I suppose we are done here, then.” She spun on her heel and made a magnificent exit, never looking back.  
   
She was nearly to her office when she heard the Beiste calling after her. “Sue, hey Sue, wait a minute.”  
   
Sue paused and turned slowly. “Yes, what?”  
   
“I just wanted to say that I believe you when you say you had nothing to do with this. Will and Emma disagree, and maybe they’ve known you longer, but you’ve also hurt them more. I mean, this is a far cry from dog poop cookies, or leaking a setlist to the competition. I just don’t think you’d go that far, just to win an election.”  
   
“Oh, well, thank you Shannon,” Sue said cordially. “I’ll take your opinion into account when I do my daily tally of things that don’t matter. I’ve already been indicted by public opinion, there is literally nothing you can do to change anyone minds.” Sue turned and made her second dramatic exit in as many minutes. Brett Favre was crying into his Wheaties at her ability to exit with an impact that didn’t diminish with repetition.  
   
Despite the fact that everyone in America seemed to think that she had a teenage boy in her basement, the next day and a half was fairly quiet. Wednesday evening the cops executed a search warrant on her house, but they found nothing, of course. Sue was always thorough when she bothered to clean up after herself. Kurt seemed to be doing slightly better once she’d began sitting him up to eat and giving him more food, but he had stayed placid and calm, ignoring her except to open his mouth. She was beginning to wonder about his state of mind.  
   
Thursday morning, there were protesters outside the school, and Sue received notes from the parents of about fifteen Cheerios that the girls had apparently been holding onto for fear of her reaction since Tuesday. Each and every one of them had been pulled off the squad. Santana, Brittany and the other girls in Corcoran’s singing group had simply stopped coming to practice instead. Sue was quite infuriated about that, but she was still playing ‘upset by false accusations’ and a screaming match with Shelby Corcoran in the hallway was the last thing she needed the media to hear about.  
   
Sue ignored the protestors, which was actually more difficult than she had expected, but then, that was the story of the last week for her. She drove home at lunchtime, tired of dealing with everything going south so quickly, locked her doors and relaxed. What was she supposed to do now? How could she possibly turn this around in her favour? It had been a week, and the story still seemed to be gaining momentum rather than losing it. It was a perfect storm of personal tragedy and political scandal, and not even Sue Sylvester could quell it.  
   
***  
   
“My hands are tied, Sue! There are over fifty angry parents calling for my job because you are still teaching at this school! You need to take a leave of absence, at least until the true culprits are found! My only other option is to suspend you, and that’s against your contract!” Figgins was high pitched and sweaty. Obviously he was not dealing with the stress of the last week as well as Sue was.  
   
“Well Figgins, I’d say that I expected better from you, but I’ve exploited the way you tend to fold under pressure every time I’ve wanted something from you, so I actually didn’t.” Sue thought for a moment, staring down at Figgins as he squirmed in his chair. There was a way to turn even this to her advantage. There had to be.  
   
If she had to leave the school for the election period, that would be okay. She had never thought that Sue Sylvester would be tired of people being angry at her, but if she wasn’t allowed to yell back it lost its charm quickly. She had never expected to sympathize with Obama, but there it was. It was Friday either way, and she either needed to find a new place for Kurt anyway or leave him alone for the weekend. She cringed at the thought of the smell she would encounter on Monday after leaving him to wallow in his own filth for a weekend, and made a snap decision. Sue was good at snap decisions. They had generally worked out for her in the past. “Okay.”  
   
“Sue, we’re out of options. You have to...” Figgins trailed off and looked up at her. “You will?” Mild shock was quickly replaced by a large smile as he saw the end of his problems coming to him. “Well, that’s excellent. My secretary has prepared the proper paperwork, and we’ll be happy to welcome you back when this all blows over.”  
   
Sue left Figgins’ office while he was still speaking, blowing past Schuester, who was standing outside the door with an expression that was a grotesque mixture of triumph and anger. He grabbed Sue’s arm roughly, and jerked her back toward him. He’d been avoiding her since their conversation last Friday, and Sue had valued that time where even if she had to see him, she didn’t have to speak to him. “Can I help you, William?”  
   
“Do you have any idea what this has done to the kids, Sue? How scared they are for their friend? They have search crews out looking for Kurt’s  _body_  Sue, Finn hasn’t been to school in a week because Burt and Carole are so scared of losing him too, and Blaine is blaming himself. This is tearing people apart, and I can’t imagine how Kurt feels. How could you?” As he spoke, his voice slowly dropped down to what Will presumably imagined a threatening hiss sounded like, and he leaned in to Sue’s personal space. Sue leaned in as well, until their faces were so close that she could no longer break his nose if she head-butted him.  
   
“William, you have no right to accuse me of anything. There is nothing connecting me to Kurt other than speculation, and you should know that I value my students more than almost anything. So,” she said silkily, “I suggest that you remove your hand from my person, and go and give some comfort to your poor, sad students.” Sue pried his grip loose and stalked off. She could feel Will trying to glare daggers into her back, but he was as ineffectual at that as he was at maintaining order in the classroom.  
   
On her way back to her office, Sue passed most of the remaining members of both glee clubs gathered around one of their lockers. All of them had identical hangdog expressions on their faces, and exhausted bags under their eyes. It was almost sad, and definitely pathetic. Mercedes noticed her first, and glared with an anger that she had never seen on a glee clubbers face before. She silently elbowed Kurt’s boyfriend, who looked up at her with the big sad eyes that were endemic to the glee club. Within seconds, they were all watching her walk by, but the ones who may have had the courage to confront her were not there: Santana, Quinn, Kurt, maybe even Hudson or Puckerman would have done it, but they were either elsewhere in the school or at home, so she strode by purposefully, ignoring them. Whispers sprung up as soon as she was past.  
   
When she reached her office, she made a show of putting on her winter coat while her mind whirred. She needed to get Kurt out of the school. That would be easy; Otto or Andre could come in that night and remove him. She needed a place to keep him. The police had been to and been through her house, they would not be back unless she did something suspicious. It would be the best place. She could leave the house tomorrow, and have Otto disguise the van as a delivery truck, so the neighbours wouldn’t be suspicious, and put Kurt back in the basement. That would work.  
   
The only problem was where to keep him in the time between taking him from the school and when she lured the police away in the morning. Her storage shed would work. It wasn’t heated, and it was getting cold at night even by Sue’s standards, but it was only for a few hours. He would be fine.  
   
***  
   
Kurt floated. The world was dark and quiet, and he was all alone. He was safe, he was warm. Nothing could hurt him here, nothing was scary. He was tired, but he thought that he had just woken up so it couldn’t be time for more sleep. He couldn’t move, but he didn’t want to anyway. Moving hurt and he felt heavy, like he’d had a long illness and was only just recovering.  
   
There were hands on him again. He didn’t react, it wasn’t worth it, but he vaguely wished that they would stop touching him. He didn’t feel like being touched. Then he was in the air, blood rushing to his face. He must be hanging upside down. He briefly considered squirming, but held still when he remembered that being dropped would be unpleasant. Cooperation was safer.  
   
He was moving. What was he supposed to do now? This hadn’t happened before, and he didn’t know what was expected of him.  He settled for holding still and hoped that he wouldn’t get in trouble.  
   
It was cold now. It took a moment for the biting chill to soak through his clothing, but when it did, Kurt suddenly jerked back to awareness. He wasn’t safe. He was in more danger than he’d ever been in. Why was it so cold? His exposed cheeks were burning within moments, and he kicked weakly at the chest of the enormous man whose shoulder he was slung over. All he got for his efforts was being held more tightly, and being slammed down to the floor of the vehicle after the man opened the door. He cringed away from touching his bare skin to the exposed metal of the floor.  
   
It was the van, Kurt realized with a jolt. The van from that night. He was going to die. They were done with him, and now he was going to die. He shivered from fear and the awful anticipation as the van jerked into gear and the engine roared and continued to shiver as the cold began to gnaw at his bones.  
   
They made the trip in silence, and when the van stopped, Kurt’s heart stopped for an instant with it. He was numb and shaking, and he was going to die. The driver turned off the engine and got out, slamming the door. There was a tense minute before the back door opened and Kurt’s ankle was grabbed and he was tugged out of the vehicle and dropped to the ground, a cement pad. It was icy cold, and Kurt’s eyelashes were frozen together with the tears of pain that he couldn’t contain.  
   
The man ignored him for a long moment, which Kurt spent trying to get his legs underneath him to run. He wouldn’t make it far, but he had to try. He had nearly forced his legs into a position he could stand up from when the man grabbed him again and laid him back out in the back of the van. The surface burned less when his face touched it, but he didn’t understand what was happening until he was suddenly being rolled across the floor and the blanket that had been between him and the van floor was coming with him.  
   
Kurt panicked and tried to struggle as his face was covered, but the man held him down easily and wrapped him in another layer, then another. By the time the fourth blanket was being wrapped around him, Kurt was restricted tightly. The cold wasn’t as bad anymore, but it was hard to breathe and getting harder. He felt a strap being tightened around the blankets at his knees, then another around his shoulders and he was turned facedown. Kurt strained desperately against the blankets, trying to shake enough of them off his face so he could breathe. There was a tiny draft of icy air coming in through the top of the roll of blankets, and Kurt turned his face upward. His chest was still uncomfortable tightly wrapped, but at least he wasn’t smothering.  
   
The van door slammed shut behind him. Kurt jerked in surprise, then held as still as he could, listening carefully. Everything was muffled by the blankets, but it sounded like he was alone in the van. He dug the his fingernails into his cast and hand in an effects to still his shivers, then heard the sound of a rolling door sliding shut with a metallic screech.  
   
He was alone. He was cold. Kurt held himself stiff until his muscles screamed in protest, then slowly relaxed until he was lying limp in his cocoon of blankets. Why wasn’t he coming back? Kurt realized with horror that just leaving him here would be a clean and easy way to kill him, and his corpse would be pre-wrapped for disposal. He had kept his promise to himself to not cry, but suddenly he was sobbing. He was never going to see Blaine again. He was never going to see Rachel or Mercedes or Finn or Carole or even Ms. Sylvester again. His dad was going to be so devastated, and Kurt hadn’t even put up a fight.  
   
He fought against the combination of the cold environment and his own exhaustion as long as he could. If he was awake, he wasn’t dead yet. Eventually though, his mind drifted away, and he fell asleep.  
   
 _I wonder if this is dying. Please, please, I don’t want to. I can’t._  
   
***  
   
Sue returned home that morning from distracting the police to find a blanket wrapped bundle on her kitchen floor. She reached a hand down the gap at the top to Kurt’s face to feel for the blindfold, and cringed from the chill of his skin.  The blindfold was still in place though, so she unstrapped the blankets and extracted him from them.  
   
He was breathing, and the rest of his body was not nearly as cold as his face was, which was a good sign for his continued survival. The storage shed had perhaps not been her best decision. Sue pulled off his socks and checked his feet, and they were as cold, but not frostbitten. They would be incredibly painful while they warmed up though.  
   
Sue dragged Kurt over to the basement door, but hesitated. He would warm up better upstairs, and she could easily take him down later. For his part, Kurt wasn’t moving. He lay there limply, and Sue couldn’t tell if he was conscious or not. Sue grabbed the top strap of the straightjacket that he had not been removed from in days, and considered if it was time for another bath. The first one had been unpleasant, but Kurt had been much easier to be around for a few days. The bath would also warm him up, if she kept his frozen feet and face out of the water. It would just be cruel to put warm water on cold skin.  
   
Sue filled the tub with warm water, then pulled Kurt into the bathroom. The last bath had been fairly easy. He had been so out of it from the concussion that he had just sat there and allowed her to undress and wash him. He had made a lot of whiny noises, but she had ignored them. This time started out similarly. She efficiently unstrapped him from the straightjacket, then pulled off his undershirt, pants and underwear while he lay there passively. She left the blindfold on, and slowly tipped him into the water, propping his legs and broken arm up on the edge of the tub to keep them out of the water.  
   
Kurt barely twitched as he hit the water, and was silent except for the faint rasping of his breath. She soaped up a cloth and washed his arms and body, rinsing him off with the showerhead. She then held him there and waited until his legs and face were red with renewed blood flow and less cold to the touch and sat him up, submerging his legs in the now cooler water. Sue knew that it must be uncomfortable, but he stayed unnervingly quiet.  
   
Sue washed his face around the blindfold, and rinsed it off with her hand. Kurt’s lack of reaction was beginning to get to her, and she quickly shampooed his greasy hair and rinsed him off, soaking the blindfold in the process. Sue drained the tub and threw a towel over him, checking his breathing and heartbeat on impulse. Kurt’s vitals were steady, but it was unexpected that he wasn’t reacting at all. Sue had stopped drugging him when he’d stopped putting up even a token resistance, and she’d expected that he would regain some liveliness when she had, but he’d continued to be quiet and passive. It made life easier, but now she wondered if maybe she should have checked if brain damage was a possible long term effect of the drugs she’d used.  
   
She dried him off and hauled him out of the tub, leaving him on the floor while she took his unbelievably smelly clothing and the straightjacket and put them in the washing machine. When she came back to the bathroom, holding an unfolded blanket in front of her in case he’d pulled off the blindfold, he was lying exactly where she’d left him, ribcage rising and falling slowly and steadily with each breath that he took. He looked asleep, but it was hard to tell with his eyes covered.  
   
Sue knelt behind his head and unwrapped the wet blindfold. Kurt’s eyes were closed, and he looked impossibly young and unhealthy. His skin was flushed red from the prolonged cold, and his lips were dry and chapped. She dried off the newly exposed skin so she could wrap a clean blindfold around his eyes. Even if he wasn’t paying attention, she had gone too far to risk revealing herself to him now.  
   
Sue wrapped him up in the blanket, and left him there. He would be fine there for a bit, and she could move him back down to the basement when his clothes were clean. She didn’t really want to be carrying a naked teenager around her house more than absolutely necessary.  
   
When she came back with newly clean clothes that would save her from having to smell the body odour that a teenage boy produces for at least a day, Kurt hadn’t moved. He didn’t react while Sue dressed him, and it was what Sue imagined trying to dress a still warm corpse pre-rigor mortis would be like, his limbs heavy and loose as she stuffed them into the sleeves of the straightjacket and his pant legs.  
   
Kurt’s unresponsiveness was getting ridiculous. Sue retrieved a full bottle of water from the kitchen, then sat Kurt up and held it up to his slack mouth. Kurt showed his first signs of life in a while when he gulped at the water as she started to pour it into his mouth and opened his mouth wider for more. He looked disconcertingly like a baby bird begging its mother for food, and Sue suddenly felt ill, her stomach churning. Her hand shook as she tipped the bottle further than she’d intended and water slopped over Kurt’s lips, dribbling down his chin. Sue pulled the bottle away, and Kurt leaned forward after it, letting out a tiny whine.  
   
Sue wiped at his chin with the damp towel from his bath, and Kurt held perfectly still until she was done and then sat there, mouth half open as he waited for the water bottle to come back. Sue’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Kurt let out a tiny sound of complaint again when the water didn’t come back. Why wasn’t he talking? The hood had been off for days, it wasn’t like he couldn’t. Sue cast her thoughts back. When had he last spoken? He had mumbled occasionally, but nothing that was formed into words. It had been Sunday, when he had woken up after his fall down the stairs and yelled at her that she had actually heard him speak. Sue had thought that he had not been talking out of a combination of drugs and spite. It was possible that he actually had some sort of brain injury from his fall down the stairs, or that the drugs she had used to keep him docile had a secondary effect.  
   
Sue shook her head to clear it. She shouldn’t jump to the worst possible conclusion. Maybe him not speaking was just a side effect of being blindfolded and kept in a near silent environment for what had been nearly ten days. It was possible that as soon as she sent him home he would get better. His arm would heal. Kurt would bounce back. She had to keep her eye on the prize.  
   
The only problem was Sue no longer knew what prize she was after. The election seemed lost. She had thought that as long as she kept Kurt mostly physically safe, any psychological effects he suffered would be worth her winning the election. She had needed to keep her promise to her sister. But she wasn’t going to win the election. The only prize that she had left was getting away with abducting a student. She had avoided thinking of it as an abduction, referring to it as the parking lot incident, or the Kurt situation. But it was. She had detached herself from the situation and planned and carried it out ruthlessly, ignoring the little nigglings of her conscience. She could no longer ignore them.  
   
Sue stood up, her legs shaking underneath her. Kurt slumped against the bathtub, and Sue leaned down to guide him to the floor, then thought better of it and instead dragged him out to the living room and lifted him onto the couch. She turned on the television and turned the volume up. If it was the silence affecting him so badly, maybe hearing voices would pull him out of his passive state.  
   
Kurt did react, but not the way Sue had expected. At the first words of the news anchor he started squirming, his face scrunching up in what looked like pain. Sue realized that it was probably shockingly loud after days spent in near silence and turned the volume down quickly. Kurt settled down again, but he turned his face towards the television in what looked like interest. Sue took that as a victory.  
   
At least, she took it as a victory until she registered what the anchor was talking about. A picture of Kurt, that same damn picture of Kurt that had appeared in every news story since last Thursday, was onscreen, and she was talking about him.  
   
“We have new information from an anonymous source with the Lima police department about the abduction of Kurt Hummel. The son of Congressional candidate Burt Hummel, Kurt was taken from the parking lot of a bar ten days ago. Police have been investigating, but the official story has been that they have no firm leads. Our source says that the police are investigating several suspects, but have no evidence to make an arrest or any information on his location.  
   
“On a sad note, our source also revealed that the investigative team does not believe Kurt to be alive. They are holding out hope, but theorize that he may have been killed and his body disposed of as early as Thursday morning, based on the ruthlessness and violence of his abductors’ blitz attack. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this time.”  
   
Kurt was shaking again, Sue noted absently. At least she had proof that he still understood human speech, even if he wasn’t using it. She turned off the television and stood for a moment, the room quiet except for the rasp of Kurt breathing. It was snowing again, harder this time. Sue had been wrong about the snow melting once more before it stayed for the winter. She had been wrong about more than that.  
   
For the first time, instead of  _I will do this for Jean, I will make the lives of people like her easier_  it was  _what would Jeannie have said if she knew about this_. Jeannie would not have wanted this. Becky would not think that having special education classes was worth risking a classmate’s life.  
   
Sue looked down at Kurt, pale and ill, possibly damaged beyond repair.  
   
She thought of Jeannie, always so small in body and huge in heart, growing frailer in the months leading up to her final illness.  
   
She had thought that she was doing this for her sister. Jean would not have wanted her to. Jean would never have forgiven her for this. Sue was suddenly terribly, devastatingly grateful that Jeannie would never know what she had done and turned, leaving the room. All she saw now when she looked at Kurt was her sister, disappointed in her. It was time to end this.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

At two am on a Thursday morning, Carole Hudson’s cell phone went off where it was sitting on the bedside table of the hotel room she and Burt were staying at in between canvassing for votes during the day. She jerked awake, and Burt nearly flopped on top of her when he groaned and rolled over to try and grab the phone, its irritating jangle echoing off the walls of the otherwise quiet room.  
   
Carole shoved him off of her and grabbed the phone, squinting against the light of the screen to check the caller id. “It’s the home line,” she said, voice raspy with sleep. “Why would the boys be calling now?” Worst case scenarios raced into her head, and Carole accepted the call as Burt turned on the bedside lamp. “Hello?”  
   
“Mom?” Finn was breathing hard and sounded scared. “Mom, you have to come home now.” He started to say more, but his voice came out more as a strained, panicky squeak than anything understandable.  
   
“Finn, Finn, baby, calm down, deep breaths.” Carole’s heart was racing. Burt was staring at her in concern, and as she listened to Finn breathe deep to try and calm himself she turned her cell onto speakerphone so he could hear clearly.  
   
A new voice came over the phone, deep but not at all reassuring. “Mrs. Hudson? This is Officer Peters with the Lima Police Department. There’s been a situation involving your son.”  
   
Carole relaxed slightly. If Finn was there and talking, he couldn’t have gotten into too much trouble. “What’s going on? Is Finn hurt?” Burt stayed quiet, but reached over and took her hand.  
   
“No, he’s fine. Is...is Mr. Hummel there with you?” The officer sounded weirdly hesitant. He must be very new to the force to not have called parents to report a delinquent teenager before.  
   
“You’re on speaker phone, I’m right here,” Burt said. “What’s going on?”  
   
The officer hesitated again. If Carole’s palms hadn’t been growing sweaty from the adrenaline rush of fear, she would have rolled her eyes at the man’s sense of the dramatic. Finally, he started talking again. “Your son, Kurt, he went out to a bar with his boyfriend tonight. When they came out after, they were attacked in the parking lot by a group of men.” Carole bit her lip to keep from whimpering, and gripped Burt’s hand tighter. His face was white, and he had the expression of a man whose worst nightmare had just come true.  
   
Carole cleared her throat to fight down the lump that had suddenly appeared. “Where are they now?” she asked, her voice wavering.  
   
“We don’t know, Mrs. Hudson. This wasn’t just an assault. They grabbed your son, and Blaine Anderson was only hurt when he tried to interfere. They took Kurt with them when they made their escape. We’re searching for the van they were driving in the hopes that we will find Kurt, but right now, we have no idea where he is. I’m so sorry.”  
   
***  
   
Three hours later, Carole and Burt pulled up to their house. Finn came out to meet them, dark circles under his eyes. Carole pulled him into a hug, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly and clung like he was a little boy again, burying his face in her shoulder. She stroked his hair and looked past Finn to the grim police officer standing behind him, and Burt patted Finn on the shoulder as he passed him to confer with the officer in a low, but panicked, voice.  
   
The next hours passed by in a whirlwind of interviews and updates. Every time Officer Peters spoke on his radio to get an update, Carole felt a flash of hope that dulled when he reported that they had found nothing. At least Blaine was going to be fine, and had been coherent enough to give a statement to the police almost immediately. That would help in finding Kurt quickly, Peters had said, since of all the witnesses Blaine had been the closest to the abductors. He had been able to confirm that the white windowless van had been there all night, and that there had only been a short pause between leaving Kurt at the car and the sounds of the attack.  
   
As it became more and more clear that Kurt had been deliberated targeted, and that it was not just a crime of opportunity, Carole felt her heart sink. When the officer asked Burt if he had any enemies, if he thought it was possibly that someone had targeted Kurt to get at him, and how was his campaign going, Burt’s face went grey with fear and underlying guilt.  
   
They ended up calling Will Schuester, since of all the people involved in Burt’s campaign, he’d been paying the most attention to their opponents. He showed up with Emma Pilsbury in tow, and both their faces grew bleaker and bleaker as the situation was explained. When Peters stopped talking, Will scrubbed at his face with his hand. Emma was quietly wiping away tears beside him.  
   
“Okay,” said Will, after considering what he’d been told for a moment and taking a deep breath. “There are three main candidates in this campaign: Burt, Sue Sylvester and Reggie Salazar. Salazar owns a pizza place, and he hasn’t been doing much in the campaign so far, so I don’t actually know that much about him. I’ve known Sue for years though, and she’s ruthless when it comes to achieving her goals. She’s always seemed sort of fond of Kurt, but I really don’t know how far she’d be willing to go to win. I’d say that this is something she’d be capable of doing, I don’t know how she pulls off half the things she does, but I don’t know if she would.”  
   
Burt frowned at him. “She’s a cheerleading coach, Will, are you serious? I’ve met the woman, she doesn’t seem like someone who’d do something like this.” Carole nodded in agreement, but Will was already shaking his head.  
   
“If there’s one thing I know, it’s not to underestimate Sue. Sometimes she acts like she’s on your side, just to get your guard down so she can stab you in the back. She probably has the resources to do this, and it’s possible that she’s convinced herself it’s a good idea. What she does, the way her mind works, it’s completely unpredictable.”  
   
Burt shrugged helplessly and turned back to Peters. “I can’t say for sure that either of my opponents would have done this, and I have almost no business rivals in this town. I have no idea who would think that attacking my son to get to me was something that wasn’t completely disgusting. Has there been any progress in looking for the van?”  
   
Peters checked his phone and shook his head. “Nothing major, or they would have called me, but I’m going to report in anyway and tell them what you’ve said about Sue Sylvester.” He stood up and disappeared into the living room, and Will and Emma stood at the same time after a whispered conference.  
   
“We’re going to go to the hospital to see Blaine. He mentioned something in Glee about his parents being out of town this week, and I hate to think of him being alone while he waits for them to come back. I’ll call you later?” Will patted Finn, who had been sitting quietly while the adults talked, on the back gently and made his exit, Emma following with a final sad glance at the three of them still at the table.  
   
Burt set his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “Burt?” Carole asked cautiously.  
   
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Burt whispered into his hands.  
   
***  
   
The police had asked them to film a short segment for the news, a request for Kurt’s safe return to try to humanize him to his abductors. They had, and all three of them had managed to hold it together, but it was hard.  
   
When CNN had called two days later and asked to interview them for an hour long program, Carole hesitated only briefly before saying yes. If a small news segment could help, a long program could possibly get enough public awareness and pressure that the person who’d done it might just let Kurt go.  
   
She was steadfast in her belief that the crews already searching for Kurt’s body would not find him, because he wasn’t dead. She had to believe that, because Burt was having an even harder time with Kurt’s abduction than her or Finn, and any doubt that she felt in her heart was reflected on Burt’s face. No one knew for sure if those men had been politically motivated, even if the police believed it, but they did know that they had targeted Kurt specifically, and that could mean any number of awful things.  
   
Carole hung up with the CNN representative and looked around the kitchen. Kurt’s school bag was still sitting where he had dropped it after he had come home on Wednesday. It was now Saturday, and no one had touched it. Carole felt the sudden sting of tears in her eyes, and turned away hurriedly.  
   
Burt was on his phone in their room, and Finn had requested some time alone, so Carole needed to occupy herself for a while. There were dishes in the sink. She could wash those, and then she could make something. That would take up some time. She ignored the way her hands were shaking as she squirted soap into the sink and ran hot water, and instead planned what everyone would wear later to be interviewed. She wasn’t used to planning outfits anymore, Kurt usually-  
   
Carole shut off the tap and dried her hands mechanically on the tea towel. Her eyes blurred, and she blinked hard to clear them. She walked slowly and purposefully into the living room and curled up on the couch, burying her face in her hands to muffle the sobs she couldn’t hold in. Eventually the couch sagged as Burt sat down beside her and put his arms around her, and she turned towards him, letting him support her until she was calmer.  
   
With a final deep breath, Carole pulled back and looked up at Burt. His eyes were red, and his expression was the grief of a parent whose child needs help that they can’t provide. She raised a hand to his face and stroked down his cheek carefully. “He’s going to be okay, Burt, I know he is. It was just a bit overwhelming for a minute, that’s all.”  
   
“It’s okay for you to be upset, too, y’know,” Burt said gently. “I know you’re trying to be strong for me, but I can be strong for you, too. You don’t have to make excuses.”  
   
Carole leaned in to embrace him. “I’m just so  _scared_ ,” she whispered into his chest.  
   
“I know,” Burt replied, just as quietly. “Me too.”  
   
***  
   
When it aired, they watched the CNN special together. It focused on Sue Sylvester as the main candidate for being the brains behind Kurt’s abduction. Carole knew that the police were investigating her, and that Will Schuester seemed to think she was capable, but Carole hadn’t really believed that it was possible she’d actually done it. When they’d pulled Kurt out of McKinley, she’d seemed like she really cared about Kurt’s wellbeing, and Kurt and Finn had planned her sister’s funeral, for god’s sakes. It was a ridiculous thought that she would abduct him. It had seemed less ridiculous as days passed and there was no new evidence, as they had begun to clutch at any straw that could lead them to Kurt, but Carole still had her doubts.  
   
But then, as the host detailed the laundry list of terrible things that Sue had done, her doubts began to melt away. Sue saw Kurt every day at school. She could’ve easily heard him and Blaine planning their trip to the bar and taken advantage of the opportunity. Carole still wasn’t convinced that she would have done it, but she could have. It would have been so easy for her.  
   
Burt stood up suddenly, and stormed out of the room. “Burt?” Carole and Finn followed him into the kitchen, where he’d grabbed the phone and was looking around on the counter for a second, picking out the business card of the officer in charge of the case and dialling. “Burt, what are you doing?”  
   
“They told me they didn’t have any evidence to get a warrant to search her house. They still don’t have the evidence, but now they have the motive and means, and they are going to get that warrant. I’m going to make sure of it.”  
   
***  
   
Over the next week, nothing got better. The police searched Sue Sylvester’s house and found nothing. Finn stayed home from school, because Carole wasn’t going to send him back until Sue was either cleared of wrongdoing or fired.  
   
The school play was postponed indefinitely. Rachel had come over on Thursday to see Finn, and had told them that even though the cast had agreed that Kurt would want the show to go on without him, no one had the heart for rehearsals, much less putting on a musical.  
   
“Blaine hasn’t even been singing in glee, you know,” Rachel had said in a confiding whisper. “I think he blames himself for what happened. I’m quite concerned about him, and I didn’t want to force him back onstage. I don’t feel like even I could do Maria justice right now, so the rest of cast definitely won’t be able to perform up to standard. We’ll just have to wait for Kurt.” Carole had taken a little bit of comfort from Rachel’s unfaltering belief that Kurt was going to come home safe, but she was not a naive teenager, and she knew that after so long with no news, it was very unlikely that they’d ever see Kurt alive again. She couldn’t believe that he was dead, not when there was still a chance that he wasn’t, but she could tell that Burt was losing hope as time passed with no news and no leads.

   
Friday, one of the women who had been protesting at McKinley that Sue was still allowed to be around children called Carole to tell her that Sue had taken a leave of absence, and had left the school early in the morning. She drove Finn to school at lunchtime, with instructions to call if he needed to come home and to stay in a group. Carole was nervous about sending him back, but he had missed the support of his friends, and had been getting antsy at home. Finn would have to go back to school sometime anyway if Kurt... she stopped herself. It had been barely a week. There was still hope.  
   
Burt’s wellbeing was beginning to worry her as much as Kurt’s did. He’d handed over most of his duties at the shop to senior mechanics for the duration of the campaign, so at least he didn’t have those responsibilities hanging over his head, but he’d been sleeping poorly, and eating worse as the stress wore at him. Carole didn’t want to resort to guilt-tripping him into eating and sleeping by reminding him that Kurt needed a dad to come back to, but she was running out of tactics to help him cope.  
   
Saturday was a bad day. They missed the initial announcement that the police were working off the theory that Kurt was dead, but it was impossible to miss the way that every news station picked it up and added it to their news rotations. “In other news, an anonymous source with the Lima Police Department has confirmed that they believe Kurt Hummel was killed the night of his abduction,” was what every news station said for hours, and Burt just sat and stared in disbelief until Carole turned it off and took him to bed. They had known that the police thought it was possible that Kurt was dead. They hadn’t known that the police thought it was certain.  
   
That was their worst day since getting the news of Kurt’s abduction, until Carole awoke the next morning to a deep coating of snow on the ground and the news talking about how the search for Kurt’s body had been called off due to the impossibility of finding him in the snow, with the investigation into his abduction to continue despite having no new leads and the search to resume in the spring.  
   
She was still sitting at the table with an untouched cup of coffee growing cold in front of her half an hour later when Finn came downstairs. He walked past her, then turned and looked at her in concern. “Mom? You okay?” He touched her hand, and Carole took his hand in hers before he could withdraw it.  
   
“Not really,” she said quietly. Her voice sounded dull and foreign to her ears. She suddenly remembered the weeks and months after Chris had died, how she had thrown herself into caring for Finn to avoid thinking of how she felt and wished that Finn was a baby again, who didn’t understand loss or grief, so she could avoid this conversation. “They just said on the radio. The snow’s too deep; they’ve had to call off the search for Kurt’s body. They’re still investigating, but they’re not going to look for him again until spring.”  
   
Finn looked down at her, puzzled, for a moment. Suddenly, his expression cleared with realization and contorted into anger. “Oh my god, you think he’s dead.”  
   
“Honey-,” Carole began, but was cut off by Finn shaking his head brusquely.  
   
“No! How can you believe that? He’s not dead, he can’t be!” Finn’s eyes glittered with tears. Before Carole could think of a response, he’d run for the stairs, slamming his bedroom door behind him. Moments later, Burt surfaced from their room, looking from where Carole stood at the foot of the stairs to Finn’s closed door, and wordlessly came down the stairs to her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close.  
   
“What’s going on?” Burt asked after a moment. Carole pulled him to the kitchen table and sat down beside him.  
   
“They’ve stopped looking for Kurt outside. The snow’s too deep.” Carole said it quickly, hoping that it would hurt as badly to have to say if she just got it over with. It didn’t help. Burt got the meaning immediately, covering his eyes with his hand and leaning forward. Carole hugged him close, rubbing one hand up and down his back soothingly.  
   
They sat like that for a long time. Eventually, Burt spoke again. “I never thought this would happen.” He paused, and Carole waited patiently for him to continue. “I knew that this town wasn’t the best place for him, but I never thought that anything would actually happen, or we would have moved years ago. This is,” he paused again and swiped at his eyes, “This is worse than anything I ever imagined. I feel like I delivered him on a silver platter by running in this election, and all I want is to see him again, safe. I would do  _anything_ ,” his voice cracked, and he stopped, continuing in a low murmur after a deep breath. “I would do anything for proof that he’s alive.”  
   
Carole hugged him tighter, laying her head on his shoulder. She didn’t know what to say. “I know,” she finally settled on. “Me too.”  
   
***  
   
Sue quickly realized that deciding that it was time to cut her losses and return Kurt was much easier said than done. The police were watching her still, and while it would be easy enough to ditch them, it would be suspicious if she disappeared right before Kurt reappeared. She also had to take the snow into account. If she sent him home when there was fresh snow on the ground, she would be easily traceable and it would have the same end result as showing up at the police station with Kurt in tow. She had to bide her time. Even if her conscience had attacked, Sue Sylvester was not planning on going to prison.  
   
She would have to wait, then. The snow was deep and fresh, and leaving tire tracks would be an unnecessary risk. When the roads were clear, and there was a night when it wasn’t snowing, she would have Otto and Andre pick Kurt up while the officer outside the house keeping tabs on her was circling the block. Then Otto would drop Kurt off at his house, blow an airhorn to attract the attention of his family, and speed off.  
   
The police would check on Sue, but she would be able to say that she was at home all evening, and even if her neighbours were watching, they wouldn’t be able to see much with the van lights off and all the streetlights off. It was a flawless plan. Sue was looking forward to enacting it. Mostly because Kurt had cried for hours after that news report and she felt gross and guilty about the entire situation, but also because she was really getting tired of taking care of him.  
   
Sue opened the basement door and walked down the stairs, stomping on each step to make as much noise as possible. If Kurt wasn’t surprised, maybe he would respond a little better to her. Sue opened the door to the bedroom. She hadn’t strapped him down to the bed, since a doorknob was enough to stop him with his arms tied up in the straightjacket and because he was pretty listless, and she would be surprised if he moved of his own accord.  
   
To Sue’s complete lack of shock, Kurt was curled up in a ball on the bed, the same position she had left him in earlier, with his knees and chin tucked into his chest. He was trembling with the effort of holding still, and Sue sighed inwardly. She knew why he was scared, he had obviously taken the news report as a threat, but she was really ready for him to go home. The kick in the teeth that the news report yesterday had been was still echoing around in her head, and guilt was not an emotion that Sue knew how to handle gracefully.  
   
At least he wasn’t completely out of it anymore. In the privacy of her own head, Sue could admit that he had been frighteningly limp and passive during his bout of hypothermia. What sort of person was she, really, that she had thought that leaving a helpless child in the cold for hours was not a problem? She had tipped over an edge without noticing, and Sue had always prided herself on creeping up to cliffs and backing off before she went too far. Kidnapping a student and hurting him, no matter whether she had intended him harm or not, was farther than she’d ever gone.  
   
The rumble of a snowplow passing through pulled her from her thoughts. She took Kurt through their care routine and then deposited him back on the bed. He was still sullenly quiet, but it hadn’t taken much prodding to get him up to go to the bathroom, so Sue counted improvement from yesterday as a minor victory. She had to count the minor victories now. She wasn’t going to have any major ones for a long time even if no one could prove she had done this.  
   
Sue left the basement and looked out her front window. The streets were almost cleared, but most people hadn’t left their homes since that morning, leaving the streets relatively unmarked by tire tracks. It was essential that the tracks be indistinguishable from others, so Sue decided to wait one more day to put the plan into action. Everyone would be forced to drive to work or school since it would be a Monday, and there was no snow in the forecast. Monday night, she thought. Monday would work.  
   
Sue was already calling Otto to finalize their plans when she heard a crash from the basement, muffled by the closed doors but impossible to miss. She hung up the phone and cautiously opened the basement door. She stepped down the first few stairs and checked the parts of the basement she could see for Kurt. The bedroom door was still closed, so he was probably in there, but it didn’t hurt to make sure.  
   
The door of the bedroom bowed outward slightly as Kurt presumably threw his weight into it from the other side. Sue crept down the stairs, trying not to alert Kurt to her presence, but Kurt only slammed himself into the door once more before Sue heard him slide down it to the floor. She opened the door carefully, but Kurt overbalanced when the support of the door was gone and Sue had to reach down to keep him from falling over. Kurt was shaking, and his breath was short, but his mouth was pressed into a thin, angry line. He jerked away from her hand to lean against the door frame, and lifted his chin until he was looking in the general direction of her face.  
   
“You’re awful,” he stated flatly, his voice scratchy from disuse. “What’s your plan here? Drug me and keep me blindfolded until I die? Why am I here, why are you doing this, what makes you think you have the  _right_  to do this, what are you hoping to gain? I don’t know where we are, I don’t know how long it’s been, I don’t know anything about anything, if you let me go I couldn’t tell people it was you because I don’t know who you are.” As he babbled, his voice getting faster and faster, he pressed himself hard against the door frame. The anger slowly faded from his voice, replaced with desperation. He sounded like he’d been rehearsing what to say in his head, and Sue wondered if this was the first time he’d been clearheaded enough to speak, between the effects of the drugs, head injury and hypothermia, rather than the first time he’d wanted to.  
   
He fell silent once more, and Sue patted him on the head in what she hoped was a reassuring manner. She picked him off the floor and walked him back to the bed, avoiding the lamp that had once been on the bedside table that he’d apparently smashed. He was trembling from seemed like exhaustion. Being forcibly restrained and not allowed to walk for nearly two weeks would weaken anybody, and Kurt had been injured. His outburst had reassured Sue that he would be just fine mentally and physically with some recovery time, since he had managed to string a sentence together without much difficulty.  
   
Having confirmed that he would probably be okay, Sue felt little compunction about leaving him there on the bed and closing the bedroom door firmly behind her. She took the broken lamp out with her in case he decided to try walking again, but she was sending him home tomorrow, and he could just wait until then. He would be fine, and then Sue wouldn’t have to feel bad about it anymore.  
   
Kurt sulked the entire afternoon, and for most of Monday as well, refusing to eat or drink. If he thought a hunger strike was going to get him anywhere, he was absolutely wrong, and Sue briefly considered keeping him a while longer to show him that it was her decision to let him go, not anything he had done. Then she remembered what a hassle the last two weeks had been, and it was making spur of the moment decisions and following through on them that had gotten her into this mess. She was going to stick to the plan.  
   
When the sun had finally set, Sue went back to the basement with a pill in hand. The pills took a little longer than the injections did to take effect, but she had some time while Andre and Otto waited for an opportunity to approach the house and a pill would be easier than forcing him to hold still for a needle. Kurt turned his face away from her when she offered him water, and clenched his jaws shut. Sue had hoped that this last drugging would go easily, but Kurt was apparently determined to make it as hard as possible. She pinched his nose, and when he parted his lips but kept his jaws closed to suck in a breath, she poured water into his mouth.   
   
The reaction was immediate. Kurt panicked and thrashed, trying to turn his head to the side so he wouldn’t choke. He coughed and gagged, and when all the water was gone, he lay there panting to try and catch his breath. Sue dropped the pill down into his mouth and stroked his throat until he swallowed reflexively.  
   
Sue stood up to leave. She would have Andre carry Kurt up the stairs when he arrived. Kurt had been uncooperative, and she would not have been able to force him up the stairs by herself. When she’d tried to walk him to the bathroom, he’d fought her every step of the way, and any change in routine like trying to bring him upstairs would probably upset him even more. It would be easier to move him when he was unconscious.  
   
Kurt lay there breathing hard for a moment, and then threw himself off the bed. He landed on the floor with a thud, and then tried to force himself upright. Sue sighed, then turned back and pinned him down to the floor to keep him from hurting himself until the drug took effect. It wasn’t a long wait before his struggles slowed, and when Sue lifted him back onto the mattress he didn’t resist.  
   
Sue waited upstairs with all the lights off for the officer to start his cruiser and circle the block. She was almost offended that they weren’t even trying to hide the fact that they had her under constant surveillance, but it was making her life so much easier that she didn’t even mind. Seconds after the police car turned the corner, Otto brought the van down the street. He slowed down in front of Sue’s house, and Andre jumped out, sprinting to cover and sneaking the rest of the way to the house. Just after Sue let him in, the cruiser came back from its rounds and parked down the street.  
   
After a moment of miscommunication, honestly, how hard was it for these people to learn English if they knew they were going to America, Andre clattered down the stairs and retrieved Kurt, limp and unresisting. Together they quickly stripped him out of the straightjacket. Sue had no desire to provide the police with something that could be traced back to her. Andre was under instructions to remove the blindfold just before leaving Kurt in front of his house, just in case he woke up early.  
   
They waited a long twenty minutes for the officer to drive off again, and Andre was out the door at the same moment that the van came by again, barely slowed by the weight of Kurt being slung across his shoulders. Otto slowed the van once more, and Andre timed his final run into the street so he hit the gap left by the open side door perfectly. He turned to close the door behind him, and the van crept off into the night.  
   
Sue slowly relaxed as the officer returned and parked again, clearly unsuspecting that Kurt had just been moved practically under his nose. She let out a long breath that was practically a sigh of relief. Everything was going according to plan. Kurt would be returned home, Sue wouldn’t be caught, and everything would go back to normal. Kurt would be fine, his family would be fine, and even if Sue wasn’t going to win the election, there was still plenty she could do to force the world to change to her liking. It wasn’t as if Sue had ever needed the backup of a political office to get her way before, and she didn’t need one now. Everything was going to work out for the best.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Kurt woke up slowly, awareness trickling back bit by bit. The surface he was lying on was hard and cold, and his bare arms were numb in the chilly air. There was a rumbling; he was in a moving vehicle. He could hear the deep voices of two men coming from somewhere above his head, but they weren’t speaking English and he couldn’t understand what they were saying.  
   
His hands were untied. He could move his arms. He fought down the thrill of hopeful excitement that shot through him, and slowly reached up to tug at his blindfold. The cast on his left arm smacked into his forehead hard when he misjudged the distance, and stars exploded behind his closed eyes. He bit his lip and used his right arm to slip the fabric off of his eyes.

   
The men’s voices from the front exploded into a loud, angry argument, and Kurt tensed. When no one grabbed him and forced the blindfold back on, he tentatively finished pulling it off his head and tried to open his eyes. They were stuck shut from having been closed for so long, but he rubbed at them carefully, and eventually he could slit his eyes open to see for the first time in what had felt like a lifetime.  
   
Two large men were in the driver and front passenger seat of the van that Kurt was almost familiar with now. They had the enormous builds of the men who had grabbed him at Scandals that night, but they weren’t wearing ski masks anymore. Kurt could see their faces- light skin and brown hair, the driver had broken his nose badly at some point. They were shouting at each other, and the only word that Kurt could make out was ‘police’.  
   
“Okay, we will wait more,” the driver acquiesced, switching to English suddenly. “I do not know why police are there, but they will move soon, then we sneak by, like at Sylvester’s house.”  
   
Kurt jerked, and a gasp that he couldn’t contain echoed through the van. Sylvester? Coach Sylvester? Why would they have been there, unless… His train of thought was interrupted by both men twisting in their seats to look at him. He stared back, eyes wide, and pushed himself towards the side of the van. His head brushed against the door handle, and he threw himself into trying to pull the door open. If there were police, they would help him. This could be over.  
   
The van made a sharp turn suddenly, and Kurt was tossed away from the door. He scrambled back over to it, but by then the passenger was out of his seat and on him, weighing him down to the floor of the van. Kurt was sharply reminded of one of the same men holding him down and drugging him the night he been grabbed, and threw everything he had into flailing and struggling, trying to force the man off of him.  
   
Kurt had managed to turn over, so he was on his back and could attack the man’s face more effectively, when the man asked suddenly, “In what condition do we return him?”  
   
The driver said tersely, “She did not say. I believe protecting identity is most important.”  
   
“Okay,” the man on Kurt said, and without further elaboration, he grabbed Kurt’s face and smashed the back of his head down on the van floor. Kurt cried out in pain, and a dizzying greyness swept across his vision. His arms flopped uselessly down from where he had been trying to claw at the man’s face, but instead of letting go when Kurt stopped fighting, the man smashed his head down three more times in quick succession. Kurt barely felt the last one, and the driver’s voice faded out along with his assailants face as he lost consciousness.  
   
***  
   
Burt Hummel jerked awake to the sound of an air horn being sounded long and loud on the street in front of his house. Carole sat up beside him, looking around blearily.  
   
“I’ll check, don’t worry,” Burt said, voice rough with sleep. He threw off the covers and grabbed his robe, pushing his feet into his slippers. He went to the bedroom window and peered down at the street. There was nothing. No vehicles, no people. He could see lights being turned on as other people awoken by the horn got out of bed, but there was no obvious source of the noise until- a shape, lying at the end of their walkway, illuminated by the streetlights. It was mostly off-white and blended in with the concrete sidewalk and snow for the most part, except for- Oh, Jesus, those were pants. Black pants, on a pale person who wasn’t wearing much else.  
   
Burt turned and ran, faster than he had ever moved in his football playing days. Carole called after him in shock, but he couldn’t answer. Within seconds, he was out of the house and kneeling on the cold cement beside his son’s still body. He fumbled for a pulse at his neck, holding Kurt’s head steady with his other hand when it threatened to loll to the side. His fingers were trembling, but he found it in an instant, slow, but strong and steady. Burt let his hand slide down to underneath Kurt’s head, gently lifting it off the concrete. He was thinner than usual, his left arm was in a cast for some reason, he was covered in yellowing bruises, and he wasn’t moving, but he was still alive. It would be okay. It had to be okay.  
   
Carole was coming out of the house now, Finn close behind her, and he could hear the neighbours as they started to gather. “He’s alive,” he blurted out, then took a breath and repeated, “He’s alive.” It sounded like a prayer, and as Carole knelt across from him and brushed a hand across Kurt’s cheek, Burt felt the weight of the world lift off of his shoulders. “Carole, I think we need an ambulance. Can you call?” Carole nodded and dashed back into the house, her feet slipping on the ice.  
   
Finn stood there. For all his staunch belief that Kurt was coming home safe, he didn’t seem to know how to react. “Finn?” Finn continued to stare, and Burt said again, louder, “Finn!” That got his attention, and Burt slid the arm that wasn’t under Kurt’s head under his knees. “Help me get him inside the house. It’s too cold out here to wait.” Finn moved quickly, jerkily, but between them they lifted Kurt easily, brought him inside and laid him out on the living room couch.  
   
Burt carefully lay Kurt’s head against the couch cushions, slowly withdrawing his hand. He noticed that Kurt’s hair was oddly slick as he did, and when he tilted his hand, blood ran down his arm from the enormous gash that split the back of Kurt’s head. He stared at his hand in shock, then glanced behind him. There was a trail of blood from the front door to the couch and Burt wiped his suddenly shaking hand off on the couch.  
   
Finn sucked in a breath from where he was standing behind him. His voice came out in a small whine. “Burt…”  
   
“Finn, get me some towels, and tell your mom that the ambulance needs to hurry.” There was a growing dark spot underneath Kurt’s head, and Finn turned and ran at the order, his footsteps falling loud in the quiet room. The only other sounds were breathing, and Carole’s voice as she spoke to the operator. She came into the living room and leaned over Burt’s shoulder to get a better look at Kurt.  
   
“His breathing seems okay, it’s a little raspy but it isn’t shallow.” Burt wordlessly showed her his bloody hand, and she whimpered before regaining control of herself and saying into the phone, “He’s bleeding, a lot, I don’t know where-,”  
   
“The back of his head,” Burt interrupted. Finn came skidding back into the room with a large towel, and Burt pressed it to the wound. Carole closed her eyes at the sight of the gash, and pressed her lips together for a moment.  
   
“The back of his head. Yes, it’s a large gash. My husband has a towel and he’s applying pressure, but it’s bleeding everywhere. No, he’s not conscious. Has he been?” Carole directed the question to Burt, who shook his head. “No, he hasn’t.”  
   
Moments later, sirens echoed in the distance, and Burt let out a tiny sigh of relief. He could already feel blood soaking through the towel to his hand, but the paramedics would be here soon to help.  
   
When they rushed in through the open front door pushing a stretcher, one of them immediately knelt down beside Kurt to begin assessment, and her partner began to question Carole rapidly. The female paramedic slid her hand onto the towel beside Burt’s, and then pulled his hand off gently but firmly.  
   
“Take a few steps back, okay? Give us a little room to work.” She turned back to Kurt as Burt edged backwards on his knees, and carefully pulled the towel off to examine his head wound. Her face gave no indication of her thoughts, but she looked up to her partner and said, “Josh, we need to get him to the hospital.” She held the towel back to his head and put her other hand on Kurt’s throat to check for a pulse.  
   
Her partner broke off his stream of questions and grabbed the back board off the stretcher. He quickly and smoothly slid it underneath Kurt’s limp body. “Give me a hand with him, please,” he said, beckoning Finn over. Finn obediently grabbed one side of the back board and as the female paramedic supported his head, they lifted him onto the stretcher. Finn let go wordlessly and stepped back as the paramedics deftly strapped Kurt down, and Carole placed a soothing hand on his shoulder. Burt stayed where he was on his knees, until the paramedics began to move towards the door.  
   
He had just got his son back again, he wasn’t going to let him out of his sight again, especially when he was this badly hurt. Burt shoved himself to his feet and followed the stretcher to the ambulance, Carole and Finn close behind him. A large crowd of their neighbours had gathered on the sidewalk, and stared as the paramedics wheeled an unresponsive and bloody Kurt out of the house and his family followed in their night clothes.  
   
Two police cars pulled up behind the ambulance, and several officers piled out. Officer Peters came up beside Burt and held him back from climbing into the ambulance beside Kurt.  
   
“Burt, I know how you must be feeling right now, but give them room to work. Take a minute to clean up and get dressed, and then I’ll drive all of you to Kurt together. You can’t help him right now, you’ll only get in the way of them trying to save him.”  
   
Burt shrugged his arm off and whirled on him, “I haven’t been able to help him for the last two weeks and he’s  _needed_  me, now he’s here and you say I can’t try?” He turned again, they were nearly finished loading Kurt. The woman paramedic climbed into the back of the ambulance and immediately began to hook Kurt up to an I.V. and oxygen mask. It was a tight fit in there; Burt really would just be in the way. His shoulders sagged in defeat and he stepped back to allow the doors to close.  
   
The bang of the doors was startling, and the high whine of the siren as the ambulance took off grated down to Burt’s very bones. He blinked back the tears from his eyes and tried to process what had just happened, from the relief of Kurt being alive to the devastating realization that they may have gotten him back just to lose him again. He looked down at his bloody hands and clenched his fists, his fingernails digging into his palms with a dull burn that fell far short of the sharp ache in his chest.  
   
***  
   
Blaine rolled over at the sound of the radio and reached for the off button on his alarm clock. He paused for a moment to listen for the seven o’clock news update, but then shook his head and smacked the button to turn it off. There had been no news any other day. There was no reason to expect it today.  
   
He showered and got dressed, picking out an outfit that Kurt would definitely not approve of, but there was no point in dressing for Kurt anymore, was there. His parents were already at the kitchen table when he went downstairs, and his mother looked up at him with a troubled expression on her face. Blaine looked back coolly, waiting for her to either tell him what she wanted or go back to her half of the newspaper.  
   
“I’ll drive you to the hospital, if you want to go,” she said suddenly.  
   
“What?” Blaine asked, confused. “Why should I go to the hospital?”  
   
His father turned around. “They found your...boyfriend. He’s there.”  
   
“What?” Blaine repeated numbly. “Kurt? He’s alive?” His mother nodded, and he heard a tiny sound escape him, somewhere between a whimper and a moan. He groped behind himself for the kitchen counter and leaned against it when his knees threatened to give out. His view of his parents blurred as his eyes filled with tears, but they didn’t matter right now. Kurt. He didn’t know if Kurt would want to see him after what he’d done, but the last two weeks of wondering if he was alive or dead had been the worst of his life, and now the news that Kurt was alive was the sweetest thing that Blaine had ever heard.  
   
“Blaine, Blaine, sweetie.” His mom was standing in front of him, reaching out but not quite touching him arm. “The news says he’s in critical condition. He’s alive, but there’s a chance that he won’t survive, baby, you have to be prepared for that.”  
   
Blaine’s knees folded underneath him, and his mother grabbed his arms and followed him down. It was too much. He had been slowly accepting that he was never going to see Kurt again, and the knowledge that he was alive, but that it was still a possibility that he would never get to see him smile again burned like fire in an open wound.  
   
He was vaguely aware of murmuring out denials, pleas to tell him that Kurt would be okay, that he wouldn’t die in between deep, sobbing breaths. His mom wrapped him up in her arms for the first time in recent memory, and stroked down his back, quietly shushing him.  
   
She let him cry it out, and when he was calmer, she said quietly, “I didn’t know you were so broken up about this sweetie. Why would you try to hide that?” Blaine looked over her shoulder at his dad, who was turned around in his chair and watching him. Blaine met his eyes accidentally, and quickly looked down at his knees again, shrugging.  
   
“Can we go? I have to- I have to be there.” His voice was raspy from crying, and he knew that he must be a mess, but he pulled himself up with the counter and stood there until his mom gave up on getting an answer and backed away.  
   
“Get your coat, we’ll go right now,” she said, disappearing into the front hall.  
   
“Blaine,” his dad said, standing up.  
   
“Please, dad, don’t, not right now.”  
   
“Blaine, I know we haven’t been very supportive of you, but we didn’t know what to say. We do care about what happens-”  
   
“ _Please_  stop,” Blaine begged. He had needed reassurance two weeks ago. Now he needed to leave. He needed to see Kurt while he still could, he needed him to stay alive.  
   
His dad stopped talking, and Blaine wrapped himself up in his winter coat. As he was heading out the door, his dad said, “I’ll be at the hospital at lunchtime to bring you something to eat. I hope that Kurt will be okay.”  
   
Blaine turned, whispered “Thank you,” then walked out the door into the dim wintry morning light to where his mom had pulled her car out of the garage and was visible through the brand new driver’s side window.  
   
***  
   
The hospital was busy. Media vans filled the parking lot, and warmly bundled reporters waited near the doors. Blaine followed his mom in through the emergency doors, and let her speak to the nurse on duty until he saw Rachel and Mercedes waiting in chairs nearby. He headed straight for them, nearly walking right into a misplaced chair, and asked “What’s going on?” His voice had a tiny edge of desperation to it, and he mentally shook himself.  _Hold it together. Just a little longer._  
   
The girls looked up at him in surprise for a second, and then Mercedes pulled him down into the chair beside her. “Finn was here a minute ago, they still don’t have much news. Kurt got dropped off at their house last night, but he was unconscious and they’re operating on him right now. He has a really bad head injury, but it’s pretty much the only thing really wrong with him. If the surgery goes well, he’ll be fine.” Mercedes’ eyes were red rimmed, and she was obviously reassuring herself and Rachel as much as informing Blaine of what had happened.  
   
Blaine’s mother came over from admitting, and hesitantly placed her hand on his shoulder. “They know you’re here, Blaine, but they think it’s best that we give Kurt’s family some privacy right now. I’m going to call in to work and say I’m not coming. Will you be okay here for a few minutes?”  
   
Blaine looked up at his mom in surprise. “You don’t have to do that, mom, I’ll be fine. Dad said he’d come at lunchtime, you don’t need to stay.”  
   
Her hand tightened slightly on his shoulder. “I’d like to though. If that’s all right with you.”  
   
Blaine stared for a moment. After all the distance that had appeared between him and his parents since he had come out, he hadn’t expected his parents to even pretend to care. They had been awkward and quiet while he was in the hospital, and hadn’t seemed willing to talk about how hard the last few weeks had been. Were they trying to make up for not being there when he’d needed them before? It would be easier to just let them do what they wanted and deal with everything later. He nodded, and his mom turned and left the emergency room, phone in hand.  
   
It was a long wait. Kurt’s other friends trickled in slowly, and eventually they were taken to a smaller room so they wouldn’t take up so much room in the emergency room. Most of the other kids had their parents with them, and none of them looked any better than they had yesterday, before the news that Kurt had been found. Apparently ‘missing’ and ‘in the hospital, probably dying’ were similar enough that none of them had been reassured. Blaine shook his head slightly. No. Not dying. He had to have a little faith.  
   
Maybe the long wait was good, Blaine told himself. It meant that Kurt was still alive. Finn didn’t come back down, and Blaine wondered if that was a good or bad sign, if Finn knew something they didn’t.  
   
True to his word, his dad showed up with a box of deli sandwiches at noon, and they were handed out among the people waiting. He leaned in to whisper into Blaine’s ear, “I brought extras, Kurt’s family might want them. Do you want to take them up to them?” Blaine studied his dad’s face, and took the food for the peace offering that it was.  
   
The nurse at the front desk directed him upstairs, and he found the small room where Kurt’s parents and Finn were waiting without difficulty.  
   
They looked up at him quickly when he entered the room, then sagged a little when they realized that he wasn’t a doctor. “I have food,” he offered quietly. “I didn’t know if you’d want it, but my dad brought it and we thought I should at least offer.” He offered the bag, and Carole reached out and took it with a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes.  
   
“Thanks, Blaine, that’s thoughtful. What’s going on downstairs? I know that there must be a few people down there by now, judging from the traffic through our house last week.” Her voice was almost normal, but there was a strained, fake quality to it that gave away how upset she was.  
   
Blaine latched onto the excuse to talk, anything to break the terrible silence. “Um, well everyone from school is there, and their parents. Also, there was a lot of reporters when I got here, I’m not sure if they’re still there. Everyone’s really worried.”  
   
Finn stared at him from the corner he was sitting in, but didn’t say anything. Burt choked a little, but managed to say, “Yeah, kid, I’d say that everyone’s worried.”  
   
Blaine shut his mouth with a snap and bit his lower lip. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d said wrong, but it had clearly been something. “Well, I’m just going to go back down then. I’ll see you later?”  
   
He got a chorus of nods in response, and backed out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. He stood there for a moment, breathing deep. It was silent beyond the door. Kurt’s family wasn’t just worried, they were scared, and they were the last ones to see Kurt, and the ones getting updates from the doctors. Blaine had run out of hope over the last weeks, and even the brief high of learning Kurt was alive had been dashed against the rocks when his mom had said that he might not make it. He’d tried to force himself to believe, but he couldn’t lie to himself. The most likely scenario was that Kurt would not survive.  
   
Blaine turned and walked down the quiet hallway. His footsteps echoed in his ears like a slowing heartbeat.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight  
  
Burt sagged in his chair when Blaine closed the door behind him. The kid hadn’t even said anything wrong, and Burt had stared at him like he’d put Kurt in the hospital himself. The wait was getting to him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. Just breathing. There was still hope.  
   
Eventually, Carole offered him a sandwich. “I know you probably don’t feel like eating, god knows I don’t, but you should.” Burt accepted it, and slowly worked his way through it. He did feel better for having a little food in him, but the knot of despair in chest didn’t ease.  
   
They sat in near silence. No one wanted to be the first to say anything, so they waited. Burt kept running that morning over in his head. Kurt laying there, so pale and cold, in a puddle of his own blood that Burt hadn’t even noticed. The sickening sensation of blood trickling down his arm. They’d have to replace the couch. Burt didn’t think he could ever look at it again.  
   
Burt knew a lot about heart attacks, thanks to Kurt’s obsessive research on the subject, but he didn’t know much about head injuries. The doctor who’d updated them had said that they needed to operate to relieve the pressure in Kurt’s skull from the bleeding in his brain, and then they needed to stabilize him before they could see him. She’d left it unsaid, but the implication that Kurt might not survive that long had hung heavily in the air between them.  
   
Fortunately for Burt, whose thoughts had been growing darker and darker, the door opened at that moment, and the doctor returned. Her face was pale and tired; she’d been off-shift but had been called in when it became obvious that Kurt was going to need a brain specialist. “He’s doing much better,” she reported. “The prognosis for him surviving is very good. We’re keeping him sedated until the swelling in his brain goes down to help keep the pressure in his brain low. I won’t be able to say for certain that he’ll recover fully until he’s awake.”  
   
“But he’ll wake up for sure?” Finn’s face shone with hope, but his hands stayed balled into tight fists on his lap.  
   
“Nothing’s certain with head trauma, but it’s very likely that he’ll make at the very least a partial recovery. Every hour that his condition stays stable or improves, his chances get better.” She patted Burt’s shoulder in a well-practise soothing gesture. “He received care very soon after the injury, and that drastically improved the likelihood of recovery. I can take you to him now, and we can talk about his less serious injuries after you’ve seen him.”  
   
Burt was standing before she’d finished speaking, and she turned and led them from the room they’d been waiting in for so long to the elevators. The sign for the neurological care unit greeted them when the elevators doors reopened, and the doctor led them quickly to a room with large windows and an open door. She turned and gestured for them to enter first, and Burt brushed past her.  
   
The person on the bed did not look like his son. Kurt was lying on his side and facing away from the door, covered up to his chest in a blanket. The back of his head was shaved, and the gash in the middle of it was stitched together, the dark thread standing out starkly against the inflamed skin it held together. Electrodes with long wires running off of them were attached in various places over his head. He looked stick thin, and lay perfectly still.  
   
Burt circled around to the other side of the bed, and looked down at Kurt’s face. There were dark circles under his eyes, and dark finger shaped bruises forming on his cheeks. A ventilator tube extended from the side of his mouth, and his chest rose and fell steadily with the rhythm of the machine. The familiar anger mixed with grief of the last days rose in his chest, but Burt squashed it down. Kurt didn’t need that. Anger would not help him get better. Burt just standing there and feeling sorry for himself would not help him either.  
   
“Hey kid,” Burt whispered, reaching out and gently cupping Kurt’s cheek in his hand. He sat down slowly in the chair at the side of the bed and leaned in to quietly say “I know I wasn’t there before. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise.”  
   
Carole and Finn approached after a moment of surveying Kurt’s battered form in silence. Carole took Kurt’s hand, the one not covered in a fresh cast, and held onto his fingers in a loose grip. She stroked her thumb over his palm slowly and then backed off to make room for Finn. He reached out a trembling hand and barely touched Kurt’s upper arm, exposed by the hospital gown he was wearing, before retreating to a corner. He stood there and looked fixedly at Kurt’s still face, as if he could force him to wake up by sheer wanting.  
   
Burt slipped his hand from Kurt’s cheek to his hand. He curled his fingers around Kurt’s cool ones, and squeezed carefully. He hadn’t expected to ever be in the position of watching his son as he lay unconscious in a hospital bed, but it was so much better than what he’d come to expect would be how he saw him again over the last days that it took his breath away in relief to see Kurt’s chest rising and falling, even if he did need a machine to do even that.  
   
Burt closed his eyes and offered up a silent thank you. He didn’t know if there was anyone up there to hear it, but it didn’t hurt to be grateful for small mercies.  
   
***  
   
Sue woke up slowly, feeling stress-free and well rested. She took her time running through her morning routine of aerobic exercise, and flipped on the television as she stretched to cool down. She nearly didn’t bother, since if anything had gone wrong the night before, she would have known about it by now either through Otto contacting her or the police arresting her. Everything had clearly gone off without a hitch.  
   
She half-listened to the anchor as he ran through his list of stories, instead concentrating on the burn as she stretched. Eventually he cycled around to the beginning again, and she tuned back in to what he was saying.  
   
“Kurt Hummel has been found alive,” he said without preamble and a facial expression brimming with fake sincerity. “The Lima, Ohio teen was abducted thirteen days ago in a violent attack that his boyfriend was also injured in. Investigators believed that the abduction was politically based, but there is not yet any word if that is still their theory after this unexpected turn of events. On Sunday, an anonymous source with the Lima police department confirmed that they did not expect to find Kurt alive. The news that he is alive comes as a relief to a town that had been grieving the loss of one of its children.”  
   
“The news is not all good, though,” he continued, his expression shifting into an approximation of sadness. “For more, we go to our correspondent in Lima. Brian?”  
   
The screen cut away to a man standing out front of a normal looking house and holding a microphone. “Thanks Dave. Sadness and joy intermingled in this quiet neighbourhood last night. I’m standing outside of the family home of Kurt Hummel, where last night at around two a.m. he was dropped off, alive, on the sidewalk. An ambulance was called soon after, and neighbours say that he was unconscious, and appeared to have suffered a severe head injury. There is no further word on his condition at this time, and Lima appears to be a town in stasis, waiting for more information. Classes were cancelled at the local schools today...”  
   
Sue gaped at the screen as the reporter continued talking. That was unexpected, to say the least. She stood up and stalked to the kitchen, retrieving her phone from the counter and tapping in Otto’s number.  
   
He answered on the second ring. “Ms. Sylvester? I had thought we were done for some time. I have been booking tickets home for last ten minutes.”  
   
She felt oddly cold and numb. “What happened last night, Otto? I gave you very specific instructions about what you were supposed to do, and ‘severe head injury’ was not on that list. Your English is pathetic, but I didn’t think you were this stupid.”  
   
“You did not give him sufficient dose to keep him asleep. He removed blindfold and had seen our faces and heard your name. I would think that you would be grateful that we protect your identity. Now we are going home, as we have taken care of loose end for you and have fulfilled our requirements.”  
   
Sue drew in a deep breath to harangue him, but the connection was cut off before she could get started when Otto hung up on her. She stared at her phone in disbelief. No one hung up on Sue Sylvester. Except for, apparently, Russian mafiosos. She had thought that they were such a useful pair of henchmen, but their definition of acceptable damage differed from hers so drastically that it was shocking. Sue was not used to being the one with moral misgivings in the mastermind-henchman relationship. She didn’t like it.  
   
Sue returned to the living room and stood in front of the television. They’d moved on to talking about the election, and Sue just let the noise wash over her. She’d almost forgotten in the hassle of dealing with Kurt that the polls opened tomorrow. She was not looking forward to that media scrum. She’d need to show up though, staying at home would send a signal that she was intimidated.  
   
Sue briefly considered stopping by the hospital, but dismissed the thought when she remembered how angry Burt had been last fall when the bullying had been out of control. She wasn’t afraid, but having that directed at her would be unpleasant, to say the least. The entirety of Schuester’s ragtag bunch of misfits would likely be there as well, and as rejuvenating as it normally was to be around sad teenagers, it wasn’t as much fun when she had guilty feelings about causing it.  
   
In the end, she elected to stay and wait for news. She could decide on a course of action when it Kurt’s future was more certain. She closed her eyes and stood stock still, running possible mitigating actions through her head and dismissing them when a fault appeared. She didn’t know how to fix this. None of her go-to plans would work, and that annoying little voice in her head whispered that they wouldn’t work because she had never done anything so awful before.  
   
Sue bit her lip and opened her eyes. The anchor and reporters still droned on, never adding any piece of new information. She grabbed her coat and headed for the door. She had changed her mind. It was time to take action. Thinking about it could come later.  
   
***  
   
Blaine suppressed a yawn, and pinched his arm hard in an effort to stay alert. A nurse had come in an hour before to tell them that Kurt was out of surgery and that his chances were good, but she hadn’t known when they’d be allowed to see him. It was getting late, and his parents were both there now, sitting together beside him. His dad had tried to talk to him when he’d come back downstairs, but Blaine had shut down the conversation as quickly as he could and stayed quiet.  
   
He was exhausted, but every time he dozed off his brain jerked awake again with ‘ _What if you fall asleep and he dies and you miss your chance to see him again?_ ’ All the vague reassurances that Kurt “should be fine” in the world wouldn’t be enough to overcome two weeks of replaying the attack in both dreams and when he was awake and the awful fear that had permeated the room Kurt’s parents and Finn had been waiting in.  
   
Blaine tipped his head back against the wall. Around him, the rest of New Directions and many of their parents leaned against each other for comfort, and Blaine’s heart ached for Kurt to hold him, for Blaine to be able to hold Kurt. He let his breath out in a tremulous sigh and closed his eyes again.  
   
After an eternity, the door to the room creaked open. Blaine thought at first that it was Brittany and Santana returning from the bathroom, but realized that they were back in their seats already and he’d somehow missed their re-entry. It turned out to be Carole, looking stretched thin with strain but hopeful in a way she hadn’t been earlier. Blaine’s heart jumped in his chest and he was suddenly wide awake.  
   
“Carole?” Rachel said, eyes wide and face shining with hope. “What’s going on?”  
   
“I’ve just come from Kurt’s room. He’s not awake, but that’s because the doctors need to keep him sedated until the swelling in his brain goes down. I just wanted to warn you that he’s on a ventilator and it looks really bad, but the doctors expect that he will get better and you can come and see him now, just for a little bit.”  
   
Everyone was on their feet within seconds. Blaine’s legs felt shaky and weak underneath him, and his mind suddenly flashed back to Kurt struggling and screaming as he was carried to that van and Blaine not being there to help until too late, and then further back, to Kurt saying no and Blaine not stopping, to Blaine not even noticing that Kurt wasn’t okay with him dancing with Sebastian. He wondered if Kurt would even want to see him when he woke up, and then mentally slapped himself for making everything about him. He would be there if Kurt wanted him to be. He would go if Kurt wanted him to. None of this was about Blaine, and he would do what he could to make it better regardless of how he felt.  
   
Blaine followed behind Puck and Quinn through the halls of the hospital, his parents right behind him. Eventually they climbed a flight of stairs and Carole brought them to a halt right outside a room with large windows, covered by closed blinds.  
   
“One or two at a time, okay? There’s a lot of machinery in there, and the last thing we need is for someone to trip over something. Who’s coming first?”  
   
Tina turned to look at Blaine, and when Blaine didn’t speak up, she raised her hand. “Mike and me will come, if that’s okay?”  
   
When they disappeared into the room, Blaine caught a glimpse of a still figure lying on the bed. He staggered over to the wall for support, and leaned against it, breathing in short gasps. His mom was there in a moment, wrapping her arms around him. To Blaine’s relief, she didn’t try to talk to him.  
   
He wanted to see Kurt. He needed Kurt so badly that the thought of not seeing him ever again had left him feeling hollow inside. He just didn’t want to see Kurt unconscious in a hospital bed when by rights he should’ve been wrapping up his campaign for class president and submitting his NYADA application.  
   
Tina and Mike both came out with tears in their eyes. Rachel and Mercedes were in the door in an instant, apparently having successfully overcome their initial hesitation. Blaine waited while the whole of New Directions went in before him and then left to get some rest at their parents’ insistence.  
   
 Finally, it was just Blaine and his parents left in the hall with Carole after Puck and Quinn left. “Are you coming in, Blaine?” Carole asked finally. Blaine nodded and stepped out of his mother’s embrace and into the doorway.  
   
The first thing he noticed was the sound, oddly enough. The steady beep of the monitors, the rushing air from the ventilator, and the complete silence otherwise. Finn was asleep in a chair in the corner, and Burt sat at Kurt’s bedside, still obviously distressed, but much less fearful than he had been earlier.  
   
The back of Kurt’s head had been shaved around an enormous wound, Blaine noticed. He was going to be mad about that. His arm was encased in a fresh white cast, and all of his visible skin was covered in bruises of varying ages. Tubes and wires were attached to him all over, but Blaine’s eyes kept getting stuck on his face. Kurt was barely recognizable under all the bruising and with all of his facial features slack from the sedation.  
   
Blaine was standing beside Burt before he had even realized he was moving, and he reached out and carefully touched the top of Kurt’s head, which seemed like the only undamaged part of him. His hair was as soft as ever, and the warmth emanating from him was comforting. Blaine leaned in to Kurt’s ear and whispered, “I’m sorry. I’ll be better if you give me the chance.”  
   
Kurt didn’t respond, but Blaine hadn’t expected him to. He straightened and said to Burt, “Thank you for letting me see him. I know we shouldn’t have been at that bar, and I’m... I’m really sorry.”  
   
Burt looked up at him tiredly, but without any anger. “No, you shouldn’t have been, but I think you’ve both paid more than enough for that. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for to me, kid. Kurt makes his own choices, and he decided to go to that bar with you. As for the rest of it, none of its either of your faults, so you can just drop that right now.”  
   
Blaine stared back at Burt in shock, and he surprised him again by saying, “Do you want to sit with him awhile? I need the bathroom like nobody’s business.” He carefully released Kurt’s hand and laid it back on the bed, then stood and walked stiffly to the door. Blaine eventually snapped out of his surprise and sat in the chair Burt had just vacated and tentatively reached for Kurt’s hand.  
   
Kurt’s hand was warm and familiar, even though the grip was strange. Kurt liked to squeeze when they held hands, and Blaine was not used to the way his hand stayed limp. He was holding Kurt’s hand though. He was holding Kurt’s hand, and Kurt was alive, and he would stay that way. And maybe he wouldn’t want to ever see Blaine again when he woke up, but it was more likely that Kurt would forgive him, because that was what Kurt did and Blaine loved him so much that he was scared to think about it sometimes.  
   
Blaine felt tears well up in his eyes and trail down his face. He swiped at them with his free hand and sniffled, and then just sat there, feeling like there was a possibility that everything would be okay for the first time in two weeks.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine  
  
Sue threw open the front doors of McKinley High. The halls were silent, and Sue peered into classrooms as she passed. All were empty. Odd, but unimportant. She knew Will, and she knew where he would be on a school day whether there were students there or not.  
   
His office door was open, and she could hear him speaking. “No, no,” he said, voice calm but strained. “I don’t have an update on Kurt’s condition, and Burt won’t be giving a statement immediately. I said that I would alert the press when something changes, and nothing has.” He paused a moment. “Yes, yes. Okay. I know people are waiting for an update, you think that his family isn’t desperate for one? How can you-” Will noticed Sue standing in the doorway. “I’ll call you back.” He dropped his phone on his desk and stood, his face twisted with hostility. “What are you  _doing_  here Sue, have you actually lost your mind?”  
   
 “William, I have not, and that is a ridiculous thing to say. I’m here because I need your help.” Sue paused. Maybe she had lost her mind. Will was not likely to be the most useful person to ask for help in convincing the public of her innocence. It would be easier and safer than going to talk to Burt Hummel though.  
   
“My help? Sue, you abducted a student to win an election, why on earth would I help you with anything?” Will came around his desk to lean against it, crossing his arms in front of him and posturing like he thought he was on Law and Order.  
   
“Because I didn’t, and I know that you’re the one who originally accused me of it.  _Think_  for once in your life, Will. The news said that Kurt is in the hospital with a severe head injury. There hasn’t been an update on his condition since they said he was critical, which says to me that it must be bad. Even if you think that I would abduct someone for personal gain, do you think that I would nearly kill him then dump him outside his parent’s house in November? You know me better than to believe I would do that to a child Will. I’m not a monster.”  
   
Will tried to keep his expression hard, but Sue could see the cracks forming and pursued them. “There is no evidence, there never was and never will be because it doesn’t exist. There wasn’t even a motive, when you take into account how Hummel skyrocketed in the polls when public sympathy kicked in. I would’ve at least been successful in winning the election. And when Kurt tells his side of this, I don’t know what he’ll say, but I do know that he won’t say it was me.”  
   
“Who else could it have been though? The boogeyman? Random men just out to hurt Kurt? You’re the only one who would have done this.” Will still looked stern, but his tone was that of someone who had made up his mind and was painfully realizing that he was wrong. Sue felt the hot glow of triumph begin in her chest. Operation: Convince Stupid People That I Had Nothing To Do With This looked like it could be a rousing success. Even if her major victories were falling down around her, the minor wins were still well within reach.  
   
“You can believe what you want, Will. I did not touch Kurt. Convincing you that I didn’t is not what I came here for. I have to put on a public appearance tomorrow as a candidate in the election. I don’t want to get mobbed by a crowd of people thirsty for my blood, so when you are inevitably asked about me, I would appreciate it if you made everything seem less open and shut than the media has. I would prefer to be the target of public hatred for something that I’ve actually done.” Sue turned to go. Pressing any further would not be worthwhile, and all she could do was hope that poor naive Will would convince himself.  
   
“Sue, wait.” Will sounded... almost ashamed. Sue smiled inwardly and turned back. “Maybe we did judge you too fast. You’re right, I do know you and you’ve never done anything like this before. I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”  
   
“Thank you, Will,” Sue said in her sincerest tone. “You truly do have a pure heart.” Will’s phone rang, and she left the room, standing outside the door to eavesdrop for a moment.  
   
“Yes, this is Will Schuester.” Will was quiet for a long moment. “Oh thank god. Yes, when the press calls, I’ll let them know. Do you... do you know if he’ll... okay, sorry, thank you. Yes. I’ll be in touch.”  
   
Sue heard a dull thud as his phone hit the desk, and then a raspy indrawn breath that came out a sob. Sue’s stomach did flips. Judging from his tone, it was at least moderately good news. If Kurt got better, Sue would be able to force things back to how they were before she had decided to try politics. She quietly left Will to his crying and went back to her car to drive home. Now was the time to wait.  
   
***  
   
Burt stared at the cot in the corner. He was exhausted, and alone except for Kurt lying unconscious on the bed beside him. He tried to remember when the cot had arrived but couldn’t come up with anything. Maybe he should think about actually using it soon.  
   
Burt glanced down at his son’s still face and considered the ups and downs of the last twenty-four hours. No wonder he was exhausted. Even if it was barely eight at night he’d been awake since two in the morning, but his mind was too full to consider sleep.  
   
Blaine had looked like he was on the verge of a mental breakdown when he’d come in, or like he’d had one already and was trying to act normal. Any residual anger that Burt had harboured for him going along with the fake ID’s and gay bar plan had evaporated at that, leaving only the growing pity at how terrifying it must have been for him as well as Kurt to be attacked. He was just a kid, after all, and kids made mistakes. Usually they had less severe consequences, but it wasn’t either of their faults that they’d been attacked.  
   
His parents had taken him home when he looked a little calmer, but Burt had been quick to tell him he could come back if he wanted tomorrow. The kid had nearly cried at that, so Burt figured it was the right thing to do.  
   
Carole had taken Finn home to get some real sleep soon after, shaking him awake and getting him up. He’d only put up a token protest, his exhaustion clear in every move. Carole had left it unsaid that she was going to make sure the blood was cleaned up, and Burt had been suddenly reminded how lucky he was to have her in his life. He wouldn’t have been able to cope with seeing the blood that had been tracked though the house and she had known that without him saying a word.  
   
Burt caught himself falling asleep in the chair, and jerked awake. It was definitely time to try that cot. He gently kissed an unbruised patch of skin on Kurt’s forehead and heaved himself out of the chair with a grunt.  
   
There was a quiet knock at the door, and Will slipped inside. “How’s he doing?” he whispered.  
   
“Better,” Burt said. “The first twenty four hours are the critical part, and he’s improving much faster than they expected. They’re going to cut back the drugs in the morning if he keeps improving.”  
   
“Good, I’m really glad to hear that.” Will paused, and visibly geared himself up before continuing. “Burt, I’m sorry to bring this up now, but... the election’s tomorrow and it looks like you’re going to win. It’s probably for the best if you make some kind of public appearance while polls are open, even if you only talk about Kurt. Especially if you talk about Kurt. The world wants to know that he’s going to be okay.”  
   
“Yeah, I’d figured as much. If nothing drastically changes before then, I’ll leave Blaine here to keep an eye on Kurt and take Finn and Carole with me to the school gym. I guess I put us in the public eye, I’d better shoulder the responsibilities that come with that.” Burt eyed Will. He still seemed nervous. “But there’s something else.”  
   
“Yes.” Will licked his lips and sighed. “Sue came to see me today. She still says that she didn’t do it, and I think I believe her.”  
   
Burt stared in disbelief for a moment. “Will, you’re the one who originally suggested her. What could she possibly have said to convince you otherwise?”  
   
He gestured at Kurt. “That. I could believe that Blaine getting hurt was accidental. What was done to Kurt while he gone is not something Sue would do. She’s done some awful things, but this is farther than she would go. I’ve known her for years.”  
   
Burt looked back at Kurt too, and tried to reconcile the image of Sylvester expelling that Karofsky kid on Kurt’s testimony alone with her grabbing his face and smashing his head against a hard surface multiple times. It didn’t fit, and besides that, they knew for a fact that at least two of Kurt’s abductors were men. It was possible that someone else was responsible. Hopefully Kurt would be able to say who when he woke up. Burt smiled a little despite the topic of his thoughts.  _When_  Kurt woke up he could say who had hurt him. Not  _if_  he woke up.  
   
***  
   
The tv played the news quietly in the background while Blaine slowly ran his fingers over Kurt’s upturned palm, resting his chin in his other hand. He jerked upright and flailed for the call button when Kurt’s hand suddenly curled up under his before relaxing again.  
   
There was a nurse there in a moment, and he stumbled over his words several times before choking out, “He moved, he made a fist, is he waking up?”  
   
The nurse checked Kurt’s vitals and charts calmly before replying. “He is waking up, but slower than you think. We lowered the dosage keeping him under this morning, and his body is just responding to that. It’ll be a while yet before we can wake him up properly.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I know it must be hard, but you have to be patient. He’s improving faster than our most optimistic expectations, but these things still take time.”  
   
The nurse left again after one last cursory check that everything was in order, and Blaine sighed and relaxed in his chair, reaching out to take Kurt’s hand in his again. Kurt didn’t move again, and Blaine settled himself in to wait.  
   
Eventually the news channel cut away to what Blaine had been waiting for- the interior of McKinley’s gym, set up as a polling station. Mr. Schue was on camera with several microphones shoved into his face, and Blaine turned it up a bit, stealing a glance at Kurt to see if he would react to the noise. Kurt remained still, and Blaine turned his attention to the screen.  
   
“...a gray area,” Mr. Schuester was saying. “I believe that Sue Sylvester is still the prime suspect as far as the police are concerned, but after seeing the extent of Kurt’s injuries, I have a hard time believing that she is responsible for Kurt’s abduction. I’ve known her for years, and how badly Kurt was injured indicates to me that Sue is innocent, at least of that.”  
   
“How is Kurt doing today?” a reporter asked quickly.  
   
“Better than he was, but I’m not the man to ask about Kurt. Burt’s coming in a little bit to give an update. He should be here soon.” The screen cut away back to the anchor as Mr. Schue stepped away from the microphones but Blaine continued to stare in shock. It took a moment for him to remember to close his mouth. He had not expected that. In all his previous interviews, Mr. Schue had been silent on who they thought had abducted Kurt, saying that he didn’t want to interfere with the investigation. Something had changed.  
   
The screen eventually cut back to the auditorium, with Burt facing the microphones this time. “I’ve just come from the hospital, yes. The doctors tell me that Kurt is doing very well, considering everything, and that they may be able to let him wake up as early as tomorrow, which is excellent news. We’re hopeful right now for a full recovery, and my family and I,” he gestured behind himself to Carole and Finn, “would just like to thank all of the wonderful people who have supported us. Thank you all so much.”  
   
“Who do you believe was behind your son’s abduction, Mr. Hummel?” A reporter called out.  
   
“I have no comment on that. The police are investigating, and I have faith that justice will be served. Other questions?” Burt looked around at the off-camera reporters, but Blaine had seen enough. He stood slowly, shaking out his stiff limbs and turned the television off.  
   
He paced the room a few times to work out some of the stiffness, then returned to his spot at Kurt’s bedside. “Did I tell you about what Rory did last week? It was really sweet. I was feeling pretty down at lunch, and he sang me a song right there in the cafeteria! I mean, we got slushied before he could finish it, but it was really nice of him anyway.”  
   
Blaine knew that Kurt probably couldn’t hear him, but it couldn’t hurt to talk to him a little. He searched his memory for the lightest moments of the last two weeks, and described them to Kurt, imagining and adding in how Kurt would have reacted to the ridiculous situations New Directions couldn’t avoid, like Puck almost losing his mohawk when a bird tried to nest in it.  
   
He thought he saw Kurt move his fingers a few more times, and continued talking and hoping that it would help. If nothing else, Kurt would wake up to tell him to be a little quieter, in the nicest way possible. Blaine smiled at the thought, and readjusted his gentle grip on Kurt’s hand. He hadn’t considered irritation as a medical treatment. It was an amusing thought, at least to someone who hadn’t slept in a while.  
   
Blaine finally ran out of things to say, and considered starting again from the beginning, but decided against it when his voice came out raspy and sleepy sounding. He realized with a mild start that he’d been unconsciously leaning forward towards Kurt, and drowsily tried to rouse himself. It hadn’t been a good night for sleeping last night, all things considered, and Kurt was here, and doing okay, and maybe a nap wouldn’t be too big of a deal.  
   
Blaine dragged his eyes open one last time, to carefully position himself so he wouldn’t jostle Kurt if he fell. He tucked his face into the crook of his elbow, keeping his grip on Kurt’s hand in case Kurt woke up and was scared, and allowed himself to drift away.  
   
***  
   
Burt opened the door to Kurt’s hospital room quietly, feeling like a new man after the shower and change of clothes he’d had before heading to the school. He was greeted with the sight of Blaine slumped forward onto Kurt’s bed, asleep but still holding his hand. It was cute, but couldn’t be comfortable. Burt shook Blaine’s shoulder gently, then stood him up while he was still mostly asleep and walked him to the cot against the wall. Blaine didn’t resist Burt’s manipulations, and curled up into himself on the cot, falling asleep again almost immediately.  
   
“Hey bud,” he whispered, looking Kurt over. Nothing seemed to have changed since he left, and Burt installed himself in the chair again to wait for Blaine’s parent’s to come and for Finn and Carole to catch up. They’d come separately so they would have two cars at the hospital so if someone needed to leave they could go without stranding the others.  
   
Carole and Finn came in after a short while, carrying their bulky winter coats over their arms. It was getting bad out there again, and Burt shuddered to consider what it would have been like to wait through the worst of the winter storms believing that Kurt was out there underneath the snow. It was an uncomfortable thought, and Burt was grateful to not be living it.  
   
It was a long afternoon. Blaine woke up eventually, and was embarrassed to have been caught sleeping. He willingly went home when his parents arrived so various other members of the glee club could have a chance to come in and sit with Kurt.  
   
Will showed up after the polls closed and they watched the results come in quietly. When Burt won, he felt sick to his stomach. He knew that he had won because people felt sorry for him. It was likely that if Kurt was sitting beside him, healthy and whole, that he would have lost the election. Burt would’ve made that trade in a heartbeat.  
   
The next morning, Kurt was taken for a CAT scan to get a more accurate measure of how he was improving. The doctor who returned with him was all smiles when he announced that they were going to let him wake up.  
   
Within an hour, every kid from the glee club had left school and come to the hospital. A nurse and the anaesthesiologist who had been taking care of Kurt took positions beside the bed, relegating Burt and Carole to positions along the wall and suggesting that Finn should probably wait outside with the other kids. It was a long wait, but the drugs finally wore off enough that they could remove the ventilator tube from his throat. After a tense moment, Kurt took a breath on his own, and the nurse covered his mouth and nose with an oxygen mask.  
   
The doctor looked over at them and gestured that they could come closer. “It shouldn’t be too long now, relatively speaking. It looks like he’s coming out of it fine, which is a really good sign. Once he’s fully awake, we’ll get Dr. Grey in here to do an assessment of his cognitive abilities.”  
   
Burt nodded in acknowledgement and fixed his eyes on Kurt. He wanted to see him move, and not the unconscious movements of yesterday.  
   
Finally, Kurt moved. It was only a little twitch of his mouth, but it was something. Burt took his hand and said, in a more excited tone than he had intended, “Kurt? Kurt, can you hear me?” He took a deep breath to calm himself, and tried again. “Kurt, I’m right here. You’re safe, and no one is going to hurt you. It’s going to be okay.”  
   
Burt continued to talk as Kurt tiny movements continued. Finally, his arm lifted slightly before dropping back down to his side, and Kurt moaned quietly. Burt threaded a hand into his hair and stroked the top of his head comfortingly. “You’re doing so good kiddo, just stay calm, everything’s going to be fine.”  
   
When Kurt’s hand flexed and moved a tiny bit where it was resting on the bed, Burt took it in his and shuffled to the side, allowing Carole to take over stroking his hair and speaking gently to him. He looked up to where the kids were crowding the windows to see into the room, and smiled at them. He was surprised by how easy it was to put on a smile. It hadn’t been easy before. Several of the kids looked ready to collapse in relief, but enough of their parents would be here by now after the school reported them for skipping that Burt wasn’t too worried about them.  
   
He returned his attention to Kurt, rubbing his back in small circles, mindful of the bruising. He was making more noise now and sounding more distressed by the second, and Burt could feel tears welling up despite his best efforts to keep calm. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re fine, I’m right here, don’t be scared.” Kurt was getting quieter again, but he was moving his mouth like he was trying to form words.  
   
Burt squeezed his hand gently, and then relaxed his grip. In the next instant, he kept quiet and still, hoping that Kurt would respond. He could barely feel it when Kurt squeezed back, since it was more just a slight movement of his hand that didn’t have any strength behind it, but it was there. Kurt’s eyes slit open slightly, just enough that the light gleamed off of them before his eyelids slid shut again, but he was awake, at least partly, and right now, that was enough for Burt.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten  
  
He was tired. He was tired and cold, and he  _hurt_  all over. Kurt stretched his mind back as far as he could, and realized with a small stab of fear that he had no idea what he had been doing that he felt this bad. He couldn’t feel anything, except the cold and the hurt. The combination was oddly familiar.  
   
Kurt tried to drag his hand up to his face to see if it was still there, but he couldn’t tell if he had managed to move or not. He tried to say something, anything, but his mouth and brain were disagreeing about how talking worked.  _This isn’t right_ , Kurt thought, his thoughts coming slower than they should be and echoing through his brain loudly.  _This isn’t how things should be._  
   
Sound and sensation slowly returned, and Kurt could feel a faint breeze brushing his skin now and then, and hear a voice. He tried to turn his head towards the source of the voice, but even considering moving his head sent a sudden flash of pain through his skull and he was suddenly hearing himself making noise instead of the warm, comforting tones he wanted to hear.  
   
There were words, he knew. There was talking so there must be words but he couldn’t pick them out and then the voice was different, not as familiar and he wanted it to come back, it was important. He tried to say what he thought, but his voice was frustrating and nothing was working right and then he realized it was his dad who had been talking before and was again. His dad was right there and was saying something and his hand was being squeezed in a familiar way and that was his dad for sure and Kurt should tell him that he was okay because he sounded concerned but he couldn’t. Instead, he focused on his hand to try and grip back. He thought he had managed it, but he wasn’t sure.  
   
It was dark. It was supposed to be dark though. But then, it was supposed to be quiet too, and his dad was talking to him. He rolled his eyes around a little. Maybe it wasn’t so dark. It was more red than black in front of his eyes, and he didn’t think that was right. He tried to look around more, and suddenly there was a bright light and it  _burned_  and he squeezed his eyelids shut again. Okay. His eyes had been closed. It wasn’t dark. He hurt enough though; he wasn’t going to open them again.  
   
His dad was still talking. Kurt focused in on that. He could hear his name, and his dad kept asking him to open his eyes. He didn’t want to, it would hurt more, but he kept asking in the same gentle tone that Kurt remembered from when he was little and hurt himself. He finally tuned out of listening to his dad and refocused on his eyes, slowly opening them.  
   
It didn’t hurt as much as it had. There was a hand over his eyes, blocking out most of the light. Kurt blinked at it, feeling mildly curious, but it was slowly withdrawn, leaving him looking at his dad’s face. The light hurt, and his eyes refused to focus properly, but it was definitely his dad, looking more worried than Kurt had ever seen him.  
   
Vague impressions came rushing through his mind suddenly, of being scared, and cold, and blind and hurt and he still didn’t know where he was or why he felt so strange but his dad was right there but so far away and he would make things better but he needed to be closer. Kurt reached out for him, trying to get his arm underneath his body to push himself into a sitting position but it was so hard to move; his limbs were so heavy. He was on his side, and that was probably making it harder to get up, so he squirmed around to try to roll over.  
   
His dad was on him suddenly, holding him still. Kurt squirmed for a moment longer before giving up, his shoulder and hip were sore from being laid on and he wanted to be on his back and he didn’t want to be held down but he was too tired to fight. He tried to tell him to stop but his voice wasn’t working so he closed his eyes again and tried to pretend that everything was okay.  
   
Kurt could hear his dad still, but he was being pinned and it was not okay and closing his eyes had been a mistake because now there were lots of other voices and loud beeping that he hadn’t noticed before and a door opening and closing repeatedly and it was so loud now why was it so loud now it was supposed to be quiet. The beeping was getting faster and what did that mean and he needed it to  _stop_.  
   
Kurt tried to pull his hand up to cover his ear and the shot of adrenaline that the noise had caused made it much easier to move his arm, but before he reached his head someone grabbed his arm and held it and there was something hard covering his arm that shouldn’t be there and it was still so loud and someone was on top of him and he needed them to get off and why was his dad letting them do this to him.  
   
He struggled, thrashing against the people holding onto him, but he couldn’t move them. Kurt gasped for breath and tried to turn his face into the pillow underneath him and something slid across his face when he did. The air suddenly seemed much heavier in his lungs, and he was choking on it. He pulled at the grip on his arm so he could try to fight back even a little, but then someone had their hands on his face and he froze. That was bad, and he didn’t know how he knew it was, but it was going to hurt. He braced himself for a sudden burst of pain, but it never came. Instead a gentle hand repositioned the thing on his face, and it got quieter again.  
   
There were still hands on him, but they weren’t holding as tight anymore. Kurt felt hazy, foggy, and vaguely wondered why he had been so upset about such unimportant things. The beeping receded until it was a comforting blur, and nothing felt as scary as it had. Kurt reopened his eyes.  
   
His dad was there still, and Kurt thought dimly that maybe he had been the one holding him down. It seemed like he should know, but everything was so fuzzy that maybe it was okay to just wait for someone to tell him what was happening. He looked at his dad, and realized that he was still talking, but the blood rushing in his ears made it really hard to hear him. With a herculean effort, he focused in on what his dad was saying, and finally understood.  
   
“...doing so good, buddy, you’re going to be just fine. Can you understand me? I know it’s hard, but you just need to focus a little.” Kurt faded out for a moment when he blinked, but forced himself to listen again. “...something to calm you down a little, I know you feel strange. Can you hear me?” His tone was soothing, and it reminded Kurt of...being younger somehow, he knew it did, but he just couldn’t think of how.  
   
Kurt swallowed thickly, his throat felt raw and dry and he didn’t want to try to talk again but his dad kept asking questions. “Dad,” he whispered. It sounded strange in his ears, and it had been only slightly understandable even to himself, but his dad had heard him, judging from the way his face lit up.  
   
“Hey, bud, hey.” He cupped his hand around the back of Kurt’s neck and rubbed a thumb up and down. “It’s going to be okay, you’re going to be okay.”  
   
Kurt twitched his lips into a smile, or something close to one, and let his eyes droop shut again. He was cold still, but even that was disappearing as he drifted away.  
   
***  
   
Burt kept stroking at Kurt’s neck gently as his breathing relaxed further and his heartbeat steadied. His voice was hoarse from talking, and Kurt clearly hadn’t understood him, hadn’t even seemed to know him until just before he’d fallen asleep again and had whispered to him, barely audible as it was muffled by the oxygen mask and his own lack of a voice. Burt had no idea why he’d panicked, but he’d nearly hit himself in the head with his casted arm before Burt had grabbed him.  
   
It hit home with a thud that they really had no idea what Kurt had gone through while he was missing. All Burt had to go on was that there had been no physical signs of sexual assault and that he hadn’t been beaten until they’d smashed his head open. He was skinny and bruised, and he’d flinched away from light and sound. Burt had let himself hope for the best when they’d told him that most of his injuries were minor. Now he had to wonder how much of Kurt’s terrified reaction was the disorientation from coming out of the anaesthesia that they’d been warned about and how much was from emotional and mental trauma.  
   
Carole slipped a hand onto his back and rubbed in circles. At least Finn had been out of the room and a nurse had closed the blinds for the worst of it so the kids hadn’t seen.  
   
Burt looked to the doctor standing on the other side of the bed. “What happened? He seemed like he was okay and then suddenly he wasn’t. What could cause that?”  
   
The doctor was frowning, looking down at Kurt. “At this point, your guess is as good as mine. Something that seemed harmless could have triggered a memory and scared him. Until we get him awake and calm, it’s going to be impossible to tell if his reactions are caused by brain damage or just by the trauma of being abducted. I’m sorry that I don’t have any real answers. All we can do right now is keep him safe and relatively comfortable, and have someone that he knows nearby whenever he wakes up. For now, that’ll have to be you, Mr. Hummel, it seemed like he recognized you at the end there, and we can reintroduce more people to him when he’s in an awake, calm state.”  
   
“Wait,” Carole interrupted. “You’re saying that he might not remember people that he knows?”  
   
“It’s a very slim possibility that he could have memory loss stretching back years, or he could have almost no loss of memory or cognitive function at all and the reaction that you just saw was caused solely by the anaesthetic. We’ll find out when he wakes up. I suggest that you don’t stress over possibilities, it won’t help. Just stay calm and support your son, and hope for the best.”  
   
Burt let his shoulders sag. He was so tired of staying calm and hoping for the best that he thought he was losing his mind. He wanted to shout that they’d spent two weeks hoping for the best and every time things seemed like they were improving they got worse again. Burt bit his lip to hold it in and turned his attention back to Kurt, breathing deeply and moving his thumb over Kurt’s pulse point. Things were getting better. His son was alive, and four days ago they hadn’t even had that.  
   
Carole gripped his free hand tightly. “Burt? Will you be okay for a few minutes? I know the kids in the hallway must be scared, and someone should go update them. Is anything going to happen in the next little bit?” she asked the doctor, who shook her head.  
   
“We’ll give him about half an hour so the most of the rest of the anaesthetic and the sedative has time to work its way out of his system then try waking him up again. I’d suggest just staying close, and the nurse will page me if he wakes up on his own.”  
   
She smiled slightly at them before turning to leave the room, and Carole followed her out. Burt dragged a chair back to Kurt’s bedside and sat down, taking Kurt’s hand in both of his warmer ones and settling in to wait.  
   
Carole came back in after several minutes. “I gave them a fairly edited version. I told them that he was confused and it scared him, and most of them seemed to accept that. They’ve gone down to the cafeteria to get something to eat, I think that they’re mostly trying to distract themselves though.”  
   
“Yeah,” Burt replied, keeping his voice as hushed as Carole had. “Probably. I saw some of their faces earlier, none of them look like they’re coping with this very well. A distraction is probably something that they need.”  
   
The wait was nearly unbearable, but it was so much easier than it had been before Kurt had come out from under the anaesthesia. Instead of lying perfectly still with only minor tics, he flexed his hands and made slight movements in his sleep. His constant motion made it easier to remember that he would wake up.  
   
Finally though, the doctor slipped back into the room. She opened the blinds, dimmed the lights even further, and turned the heart monitor down until it was barely audible. “We’ll give him the most quiet and peaceful environment we can,” she explained, “and hopefully that will help him to understand what is said to him and to be calm. You can wake him up now, Burt. Carole, you should come over here, out of his line of sight. We don’t want to risk overwhelming him again.”  
   
Burt waited a moment while Carole moved, and then leaned back a little himself so Kurt would feel like his personal space wasn’t being invaded. “Kurt? Hey bud, can you wake up for me? Kurt?” He waited a moment, and Kurt’s movements became more pronounced. His eyes opened slightly after a moment, and Burt squeezed his hand gently. He had responded to that earlier, maybe he would again. Sure enough, after a moment, he felt an answering pressure against his palm, slight but unmistakeable.  
   
Kurt’s eyes opened wider, and Burt smiled at him. “There’s a boy, you’re doing so well.” He paused for a moment, considering what to ask. He’d had trouble speaking earlier, so maybe he should avoid that. “If you understand me, would you squeeze my hand again?” He waited patiently, and Kurt squeezed harder than he had managed before. His smile got wider and he looked up to Carole and the medical people and nodded at them to indicate that Kurt had responded.  
   
When he looked back down at Kurt, he was looking around the room, but not trying to move his head, to Burt’s relief. Burt holding him down to keep him from rolling over and putting pressure on the wound on the back of his head had probably been what had made Kurt panic, and Burt didn’t want that to happen again.  
   
A nurse passed him a cup from the other side of the bed, staying out of Kurt’s sight. Burt peered into it, noticed it was full of ice chips and looked up at her questioningly. She mimed putting them in her mouth and Burt nodded in understanding.  
   
“Kurt?” Kurt looked back at him slowly, and Burt held up the cup. “Are you thirsty? I have something that would help with that. Squeeze my hand if you are, okay?” Kurt had weakly tightened his grip before Burt finished talking, and Burt carefully moved the oxygen mask out of the way and held an ice chip to his lips. “Open up, kid.” Kurt’s mouth dropped open and Burt dropped the ice chip on his tongue and then held the oxygen mask back in front of his nose and mouth. He could see Kurt slowly working it around his mouth, and he quickly reopened for more. Burt complied, but felt uneasily like he was feeding a toddler, except that Kurt had never been this willing when Burt was spoon feeding him mashed peas.  
   
The ice chips were gone quickly, and Kurt looked almost alert. There was still a hazy quality to him, and his facial expressions were unfamiliar, but he was looking up at Burt with recognition in his eyes.  
   
The doctor took the empty cup as her cue to nudge Carole over into Kurt’s line of sight. Kurt twitched his gaze over to her and kept it fixed there as she approached slowly. “Hi honey, I’m so happy that you’re awake. Do you know who I am?”  
   
Kurt’s lips moved but no sound came out. His mouth turned downwards in a small frown, and he cleared his throat quietly before trying again. “Carole,” he finally said, mumbling as if his tongue was too thick and sound muffled by the oxygen mask, but very distinct.  
   
Carole smiled at him and he tentatively smiled back for an instant. Burt’s own grin threatened to split his face in half. “There’s a doctor here too, Kurt, she’d like to ask you some questions. Is that okay?”  
   
Kurt looked back up at him, confusion beginning to show on his face. “What’s going on?” he slurred, stumbling over consonants. “Why’m I here?”  
   
Burt hesitated. They were supposed to keep him calm, and telling him that he was abducted would probably not work towards that. “Your head,” he said finally. “You had a really bad head injury, and they had to operate. You’re doing so much better though. It’s going to be okay. Is it alright if the doctor talks to you for a bit? I’ll stay right here.”  
   
“...’Kay,” Kurt agreed after a moment.  
   
The neurologist came around the bed quietly, everything about her demeanour calm. “Hi, Kurt, my name is Dr. Grey. I’m just going to ask you some questions, then we’ll try and do some activities, okay? If you get tired, or you don’t want to, just let us know. Is this okay with you?”  
   
Kurt considered her words slowly. “Yes,” he said quietly.  
   
“Okay, let’s get started then. Can you tell me your full name and date of birth?”  
   
***  
   
By the time the doctor was finished with the tests, Kurt’s blinks were getting slower and longer. “Why don’t you take a little nap, Kurt, and we can talk a bit more when you wake up,” she said in the same gentle tone she’d been using.  
   
His eyebrows drew close together with concentration. “I think...Blaine was there. Is he okay?” Kurt was speaking slowly, with careful inflection. Burt hoped that it was the drugs causing it.  
   
“Blaine’s just fine, kiddo, he’ll be here to see you later. Everyone else is okay. Don’t worry about that.” Burt smoothed Kurt’s fringe back from his face. “You just get some rest.”  
   
Kurt closed his eyes and relaxed against the pillow. Within minutes he was asleep, and Burt turned to the doctor. “What do you think?”  
   
“I think he’s been through a lot. He’s weaker than he should be, physically, which is also affecting his coordination. We’ll start him on physical therapy as soon as possible to help with the weakness, but judging from his muscles, I do think that most of the weakness is from inactivity, which is a very good thing. Um, for his physical recovery, at least,” she speedily corrected, biting her lip. “This was a good baseline interview. As he improves, we’ll have several more to check his progress.”  
   
“What about his memory? He didn’t seem very clear on anything at all,” Carole said. “He remembers people and places, but not things that happened to him? Do you think anything will come back to him?”  
   
“Only time will tell. It’s likely he’s still not completely awake from the anaesthetic, and it could be that information will come back when he’s more able to concentrate. It’s also possible that the memories just aren’t there, though, and nothing will come back.”  
   
“What about the way he’s talking?” Burt asked. “Is that the drugs too? Or is it damage?” They were into questions that he didn’t really want to know the answers to now. Kurt saw his voice as his future, and any problems he had with speaking would probably carry over into singing. He would be devastated if his voice didn’t work.  
   
“Some of it’s the anaesthetic. Not all of it. The slurring can be attributed to disorientation and drugs, for the most part. The way it took him so long to gather his thoughts before speaking may also mostly be a result of the anaesthetic. Hopefully the damage is minimal, but we’ll work with him, and if all goes well, he will continue to improve as quickly as he has been. I’ll run through the same questions with him tomorrow, and we’ll see what happens.” She paused, looking at them to continue with their questions.  
   
“What should we do until then, though? He’s not going to sleep the whole time, is he? What should we do about the kids waiting in the hall, can they come in and see him if they’re quiet?” He gestured to the window, where they were all nearly pressed up against the glass trying to see in. There were still thousands of questions running through Burt’s head, but they could wait. He didn’t need to know the answers just yet.  
   
She smiled reassuringly. “He’ll certainly wake up. Give him more ice chips whenever he does, they’ll help him talk. Have someone that he trusts here at all times. If he’s distressed and you need help, the call button is right beside the bed. As for the kids, they can help. It can’t be the two of you all the time, there’s no telling how long he’ll need someone close by. Ask the ones who are closest to him if they’d be willing to take shifts, and if they’re quiet and you know that they will be gentle with Kurt, the others can certainly be allowed in for short periods. It will help for him to see familiar faces, and we’ll be monitoring him very closely. Is there anything else that you need right now? I’ll be back before long on my rounds, so if anything else comes to mind, you can ask then.”  
   
Burt looked to Carole, and she nodded in agreement. “It’s okay, we can wait. Seems like all there is to do is wait, but we’re good at that. Thanks.” The doctor gathered her notes and left, and Burt looked back down to Kurt, apparently sleeping peacefully. He’d been so far from the son he knew when he’d been awake that Burt ached to compare them.  _Stop that_ , he scolded himself.  _Be grateful for what you have. You still have your son, and that’s what matters._  
   
“Will you stay with him for a moment?” he asked Carole. “I’m going to go and deal with the kids.” He didn’t add  _I need to be out of this room right now, I can’t deal with my baby being brain damaged and his future maybe being gone because of what some assholes thought would break_ me _. I can’t._  
   
***  
   
Blaine peered in the window, crowded in between Rachel, Mercedes, Mike and Tina. Kurt was moving, he could see him moving. Burt looked up at them and smiled, and Blaine’s knees buckled in relief. He gripped the bottom of the window so tightly his fingers were turning white to stay steady on his feet.  
   
Kurt looked like he was waking up, and then his dad was holding him, it looked like to prevent him from rolling over. Kurt flung his casted arm up towards his face, nearly hitting himself in the side of the head. His dad caught him before he managed it, his mouth moving quickly as he spoke to Kurt. Kurt struggled weakly before going still, but then something happened, Blaine didn’t know what, and he started struggling in earnest.  
   
Carole moved in to help hold his legs steady, and the nurse gently pushed on his hips to keep him from turning onto his back. Moments later, someone brushed by, quickly opening and closing the door to the room again, and tugged the blinds shut, blocking everyone’s view of the room.  
   
Blaine stood there for a long time, staring open mouthed at the blinds. He kept his knees locked, knowing that his legs wouldn’t hold him up if he didn’t.  
   
“What’s going on, why would he act like that?” Rachel said to no one in particular. “Why wouldn’t they let us see? This is much worse!”  
   
Blaine tuned her out and waited, staring at the closed door and willing it to reopen. It wasn’t a long wait until Carole came out, only about ten minutes, but it stretched out until Blaine felt like screaming, running, hitting something, doing  _anything_  to distract himself from the fact that Kurt was only feet away and something was wrong and Blaine was stuck outside waiting.  
   
When the doctor opened the door quietly and slipped out though, Carole directly behind her, the wait was forgotten. He stared at Carole as Finn rushed over and demanded to know what was happening. She looked tired and overstressed, but all Blaine could think of was Kurt, weakly flailing on that bed, trying to escape from his own father.  
   
“It’s okay,” she said quickly. “He was just scared, they gave him something to calm him down and now he’s asleep. They’re going to give him a little while before they try waking him up again, but it’s nothing for you guys to worry about yet. Why don’t you all go down to the cafeteria for something to eat? It’ll be about half an hour.” She addressed the last part to the group of parents, and they nodded their heads in agreement.  
   
Blaine’s heart sank. The last place he wanted to be was somewhere away from Kurt where he would be expected to eat. He felt like he would never be hungry again. Finn looked similarly mutinous, but Carole grabbed his hand and pulled him down to whisper in his ear before he could say anything, and he nodded. The group started moving away from the door to Kurt’s room, but Blaine stayed there, indecisive. He didn’t want to go, but he didn’t want to make trouble for Kurt’s parents either. They already had more than enough to deal with. He turned slowly and followed the group, trying not to pout.  
   
By the time they returned from the cafeteria, it had been forty minutes. Blaine wondered if all parents could communicate psychically or if it was just these ones, because Carole had clearly wanted them gone for a bit so they wouldn’t be blocking the door to the room in case something went wrong again.  
   
When they got back, the blinds were drawn and the doctor was standing between Burt and Carole, talking to Kurt. Blaine couldn’t see his face, but it looked like Kurt was awake and responding from their reactions. Blaine’s heart beat faster in his chest. Kurt was awake and talking. He almost pressed himself against the window trying to get a better view of him, and the rest of New Directions, former and current members both, was right beside him. Uncomfortably beside him, in the case of Puck, who pushed him the rest of the way into the wall when he jammed himself into the pile up of people trying to see in.  
   
The doctor apparently finished with Kurt and then held a conversation with Burt and Carole. Blaine wished that he knew how to read lips, and watched as closely as he could, hoping that he could pick out a few words.  
   
The doctor came out first, nodding to them. “One of them will be out to talk to you guys in a minute. I have to check on some other patients, or I would stick around.” She bustled off, and Blaine redirected his attention into the room, where Burt had just tilted his head down to give Carole a kiss on the cheek and turned to the door. Carole took a seat beside the bed.  
   
Burt came out, shutting the door carefully behind him. “He’s asleep again, but he was making sense when he talked and the doctor says he’ll keep improving. We need to have someone with him all the time, and Carole and I aren’t dumb enough to think that us and Finn’ll be able to manage that alone, so if it’s okay with your parents, we’d appreciate it if some of you kids that he’s closest to would be willing to sit with him sometimes.”  
   
Blaine tripped over his words trying to volunteer, and Rachel and Mercedes both had their hands up before he could say anything. “Anything we can do, Mr. Hummel,” Mercedes said seriously.  
   
Blaine finally forced his words into order. “Me too. Anything,” he echoed.  
   
“Thank you kids, I’ll call your parents. Kurt’ll be asleep for a while, and I know that you’re all supposed to be in school. You should head back there, and you can come back later and we’ll see if he’s up to seeing everyone, okay? Finn, why don’t you come with me?” Burt clapped a heavy hand onto Blaine’s shoulder and patted him there sympathetically. “You can come back later. Kurt wants to see you, but now isn’t the time, okay? Go to school,” he said quietly.  
   
Blaine jerked a little.  _Kurt wants to see you. Kurt wants to see you._  It echoed in his head and he blinked hard to clear his eyes of the moisture gathering there. Burt patted him on the shoulder once more before letting go and turning to Finn, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and steering him down the hallway.  
   
Tina touched his hand to get his attention. “Blaine? We’re going now. Are you coming?”  
   
Blaine had zoned out, and startled at the contact. “Yeah, yes, I am.” He looked through the window one more time, trying to memorize the peaceful rise and fall of Kurt’s side as he breathed, and followed Tina down the hall.  
   
***  
   
He didn’t remember what had happened at school. He followed Tina around in a blur, and it was only when she walked into the wrong classroom three times trying to find fifth period that he realized she was as distracted as him. They spent the rest of the day hiding out in the choir room with Mercedes, who had been there when they came in.  
   
“I can’t focus,” she had explained. “I feel like I’m having a dream, and I’m scared I’m going to wake up and find out that Kurt isn’t in the hospital, that he’s still out there somewhere.”  
   
The three of them had leaned up against each other underneath the piano and waited. At some point, they’d all dozed off, only waking up with the final dismissal bell. Everyone else was waiting for them when they made it to the parking lot, huffing slightly from the mad dash.  
   
They hadn’t needed to hurry. Kurt was asleep again when they arrived, but Finn came out when he saw them.  
   
“You guys, he totally woke up and he was talking to me. He sounded really tired, but he threatened to burn my shirt while I was still wearing it if I didn’t change before he saw it again. And he said that he totally wanted to see you guys, but he fell asleep while he was talking so maybe you guys should make a schedule for who gets to see because it takes a long time for him to wake up again when he falls asleep and then there would be less waiting. I thought Rachel should do that, because she’s really good at schedules.” Finn grinned at them when he was finished talking. Blaine wondered if he’d taken a breath at any point, but the thought was quickly swept away by the realization of how pleased Finn seemed. Kurt was obviously doing really well. He smiled up at Finn, and Finn even smiled back at him a little.  
   
Rachel was already digging through her purse for her phone. “Actually, I had considered a schedule, but dismissed it as too regimented for visiting an invalid friend. Instead, I set everyone’s names to a random number generator for the order in which we should go in to avoid any arguments. I also set people into pairs to speed up the process. So first up should be-”  
   
Blaine tuned out in favour of looking in the window. Burt was laying on the cot in the corner, and Carole was sitting with Kurt. Carole looked up and noticed him, and made a beckoning gesture. He stared at her, wide-eyed, and she repeated the gesture quickly then looked back down at Kurt, who had just fidgeted slightly on the bed. Blaine was through the door in an instant, but tiptoed over to the side of the bed Carole was on. Kurt was slowly blinking his eyes, like he’d just woken up. He looked pale and bruised and frail but none of that mattered because he was awake and Blaine was reaching out for him before he even realized that he’d decided to.  
   
“Give him just a second to wake up more, honey,” Carole said, touching his hand. Blaine froze mid reach, then let his hand fall back to his side. Kurt’s eyes slowly focused, and he looked at Carole and smiled lazily, the oxygen mask on his face shifting as his mouth moved.  
   
“Hi,” he said quietly, his voice raspy and weak.  
   
“Hi, Kurt,” Carole responded, rubbing her thumb over Kurt’s hand. “Look who’s here to see you, we told you he was okay.” She was speaking slower and louder than usual, but Kurt didn’t seem to notice. He slowly turned his steady gaze onto Blaine, seemingly unconcerned, but then his eyes widened with recognition.  
   
“Blaine?” he said, and Kurt definitely sounded odd. But then he was lifting his hand toward Blaine and Blaine reached back out for him quickly, taking Kurt’s hand in his. “I was scared about you, I think. I remember you got hurt.”  
   
“Yeah, but I’m fine now, it wasn’t too bad. How do you feel?” Blaine smacked himself internally. What kind of question was that?  
   
Kurt kept his gaze locked straight on Blaine, not moving it for even an instant. “Better. I was feeling bad, but now there are people here, so it’s better. I didn’t like being alone.” He squirmed a little. “Will you come closer?” Blaine leaned in close, and Kurt finally looked away from him to Carole. “No, closer.”  
   
“I can take a hint,” Carole said good-naturedly, and she stood up and crossed to the wall of the room, leaning against it.  
   
“You have to tell me something and you can’t lie,” Kurt demanded, dropping his voice even quieter than it had been.  
   
“Anything.”  
   
“Why am I here? What happened? I remember lots of things, but they don’t make any sense and I can’t put them in order and it’s scary. Please, Blaine, they keep saying that they’ll tell me later but I need to know.” Kurt’s speech was slow and littered with false starts, Blaine noticed. There was definitely something wrong.  
   
“Do you remember Sebastian, or how we went to out to a gay bar?” Blaine kept his voice low, and deliberately didn’t look at Carole to avoid raising suspicion.  
   
Kurt closed his eyes, obviously thinking hard. “Yes,” he said finally. He paused. “The parking lot. That’s where you got hurt.”  
   
“Yeah. Some men grabbed you and took you away in a van. Do you remember that?” Blaine kept his voice calm, hoping that it would help Kurt keep his composure, which he was obviously rapidly losing.  
   
Kurt shivered. “They held me down and gave me a shot and then I don’t know what happened after that.” He opened his eyes again, looking straight at Blaine. “Can you put your arm around me?”  
   
“Of course.” Blaine slid closer and reached around to spread his palm on Kurt’s back. The angle was awkward, but the way that Kurt obviously drew comfort from it made the awkwardness unimportant.  
   
“Where did they take me? Do you know? I remember lots of weird things, but not any people. Sometimes he would move me around, I think, but nothing makes sense.” Kurt’s voice stayed quiet, but he was obviously getting more upset. He had to try several times to get each word out, and a slur was getting more and more audible.  
   
“No, I don’t know. All anyone knows is that you were gone for almost two weeks and then when they left you, you were hurt like this.” Kurt made a tiny hurt sound, and Blaine squirmed in closer. “It’s going to be okay, Kurt, the doctor said it would be.”  
   
“Stay?” The word was tiny, barely audible, but Blaine heard it like it had been shouted into his ear.  
   
“Whatever you want. I won’t leave, I promise.” Kurt relaxed under his arm, and his eyes slid shut again. Blaine held his position, tracing patterns into Kurt’s back and humming quietly.  
   
***  
   
Burt crawled into bed beside Carole, wishing that his thoughts would slow down enough that he could finally sleep. It had been four days since Kurt had finally woken up, and it was the first night that he’d spent in his own bed. Kurt had been clingy, but he apparently just needed someone there, because he reacted the same if it was Burt or Carole or Finn or Mercedes or Blaine there beside him, asking them to talk to him, and to touch him. Blaine was staying with him that night, since Kurt had finally realized that they hadn’t really showered in a while and firmly informed them that Blaine would stay with him that night while they went home and took did that.  
   
They’d had an interview with a police officer yesterday, to try get something useful out of him, but Kurt’s memories of the last two weeks were so scattered that they were useless. They’d been able to conclude that he’d been blindfolded the entire time, and that he’d been kept in a very quiet place, but he didn’t know anything useful, except for adamantly insisting that it had been a man who had moved him around and taken care of him, because he had been carried around, he remembered that.  
   
It was enough for Burt to see red, but not enough to help him find anyone to take it out on, so he had settled for clenching his fists hard enough that his fingernails drew blood and vowing to tear apart the asshole that had hurt his son. A doctor had said that the blindfold and the quiet could have prevented him from forming meaningful memories. Apparently sight and sound were important for remembering much of anything at all.  
   
Burt took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. There was no sense in getting himself excited just in time to try and sleep. He thought instead of Kurt at the hospital, smiling at him as he shakily fed himself warm soup with Burt assistance in lifting his arm and keeping his hand steady. They’d helped him sit up for a while yesterday, and even his talking was getting better. Dr. Grey had starting giving him little exercises to do to help rebuild his strength, and Kurt was doing them without complaint.  
   
Burt fell asleep with a smile on his face. Kurt was going to be fine. Even if they never found the bastards, Kurt was going to get better eventually, and that was the most important part.  
   
***  
   
Blaine rambled on about nothing in particular. Kurt watched him with a little smile on face, made less awkward by the oxygen mask finally having been removed earlier that day. Apparently he liked to listen to people talk now, and Blaine didn’t really blame him, after what he’d been through. The smile slid off Kurt’s face suddenly, and he sat up a little more. “Blaine, who won class president? The elections over now, isn’t it?”  
   
“Well, um, that hockey player guy took a puck to the head or something, so he wasn’t at school, and Rachel’s pretty much didn’t stand a chance, and you were gone, so Brittany.”  
   
“I thought so. And the NYADA admission deadline is past, isn’t it.” It was barely a question, and Kurt looked so sad that Blaine wanted to wrap him up in his arms and never let him go.  
   
“Yes, but Rachel and I submitted your application for you, so it’s not all bad. All you have to do is be healthy by the time the final auditions roll around, and then you’ll get in no problem. You’re so amazing that it won’t even be a decision.” Blaine leaned in to kiss his cheek, but Kurt twitched away.  
   
“I’m not going to get in, Blaine, you shouldn’t have bothered.”  
   
“What? But-”  
   
“Look at me, Blaine. Actually look. Listen to the way my voice sounds. There is something wrong with me. I know you can see it. I can feel it. I can’t even feed myself, how can I audition for the most pres- the most prestigious performing arts school in the country?” The anger drained out of him as quickly as it had come and Kurt sagged against the pillows propping him up. “I’m going to be lucky to be walking by January, Blaine. I won’t be singing and dancing in February, even if I am a finalist, which I doubt.”  
   
“Kurt...I...”  
   
“Can I have a little time alone? I need a little time without someone here.” Kurt looked away from him, dropping his gaze to his lap and fiddling with the edge of his cast.  
   
“I’m not supposed to leave you, I promised your dad.” Blaine was halfway to standing despite his reluctance to leave. Kurt looked like he was on the verge of tears.  
   
“ _Please_ , Blaine.”  
   
Blaine stood. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Is that okay?” Kurt just nodded, and Blaine left the room and walked down the hall, checking his watch for when he could go back. He ended up sliding down the wall to sit on the floor and holding his head in his hands. Kurt was right, of course. Blaine was such an idiot.  
   
He checked his watch every few seconds, waiting until he could go back to Kurt’s room, and he had to restrain himself from running when his watch finally said that ten minutes was over. Blaine re-entered the room to find Kurt, eyes red but dry, staring off into space.  
   
“Kurt?”  
   
“Can we not talk for awhile? I think I miss the quiet, but I don’t want to be alone, I think. I don’t like it anymore.” Blaine nodded, and Kurt smiled at him, his mouth twisted with a bitter sadness. “Would you come and lay with me? You’d fit, probably.”  
   
Kurt wanted to cuddle, unsurprising, from how handsy he’d been with everyone since waking up, he was touchstarved- Blaine forcibly shut down that train of thought.“Okay, sure, I can turn down the lights first if you want?” Kurt nodded slightly, and Blaine quickly turned down the lights and stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers, digging in his bag for the pyjama pants he’d thrown in. Kurt wiggled down on the bed, and Blaine pulled the blanket off and readjusted his tubes and hospital gown, trying not to blush at the way it revealed more of Kurt’s thigh than he had ever seen.  
   
Blaine helped Kurt shift to one side and slid into the bed. “You should probably be on top of me, there isn’t room for both of us side by side,” he said.  
   
Kurt wiggled closer again, and Blaine helped him pillow his head into Blaine’s neck and lay his casted arm over Blaine’s far shoulder. Blaine flipped the blanket back over them and wrapped his arms around Kurt’s chest and snuggled him closer the way he had wanted to for so long, and Kurt responded by whispering “Thank you.”   
   
“Thank you for letting me be here.” Blaine paused. “Kurt, do you remember that we fought right before those men came?”  
   
Kurt was silent for a minute. “I thought we weren’t going to talk,” he said finally.  
   
“Okay, sorry, I forgot, you don’t have to answer. Not that you had to before I told you that you didn’t have to. Sorry.” Blaine finally bit his lip to stop the stream of babbling coming out of his mouth, and Kurt lay on him, unmoving.  
   
“Yes,” Kurt said suddenly, surprising Blaine. He’d thought that he was asleep already. “I remember the fight.”  
   
“I’m so sorry for pressing you like that, and for storming off like a toddler. Kurt, I am so, so sorry that I wasn’t there.”  
   
“Blaine, I don’t think any of this is your fault, but I’ll take the sorry for the fight. You know that I do love you, right? I’m not mad at you for what you did anymore.”  
   
“I know you do, and I love you too, so much, and I am so happy to have you back, Kurt,” Blaine choked out, breathing carefully but not able to keep the tears at bay. He snuggled into Kurt, and closed his eyes. “I’ll be quiet now, I promise.” Kurt huffed out a little laugh in response, and Blaine could feel his smile against his neck. They stayed quiet until they fell asleep, Blaine dropping off soon after he felt Kurt relax into sleep.  
   
***  
   
Blaine awoke to a woman’s face, up close and personal with his. He couldn’t restrain a tiny yelp, and Kurt began to shift in his arms. He jerked back and blinked rapidly to try and clear his eyes, and Sue Sylvester’s face slowly came into focus. “Hey, buddy,” she said, grinning at him.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven   


So Sue had lost the election. Humiliating, but she probably deserved it. The newspapers were full of stories about how Burt Hummel had “overcome incredible odds” to win the election, and what she had done to Kurt was a huge part of all of them.

Showing up at the polls the day before had been the right decision, and somehow, William had even been useful to her when he had given that interview saying that he didn’t think she was responsible. Just how little proof there was that she had done anything wrong was finally being paid attention to, and the news shows were changing their tunes. Sue thought that her best chance at this point would be to stay quiet and let people talk themselves into believing that she hadn’t done anything.

Waiting was tedious, but Sue was used to occasionally needing to bide her time. The public at large would lose interest in Kurt Hummel given time, and as time passed and no evidence came to light, hopefully even the people who were close to Kurt would stop caring so much about who had hurt him and focus on him getting better, if they weren’t already. Sue wasn’t really sure how they would be reacting.

Kurt’s condition was a problem. Reports on how he was doing were few and far between, and Sue didn’t think that was a good sign. Again though, all she could do was wait. If he didn’t get better, Sue didn’t know what she would do. She had considered turning herself in, but that wouldn’t really help anyone. Particularly not herself.

Sue spent the morning cleaning her house. Imelda had been back while she was keeping Kurt at school, but the basement badly needed tidying. Sue had just finished mopping the concrete floors with bleach (useful for destroying DNA evidence just in case the cops searched her house again) when the doorbell rang.

Forty-five minutes later she was sitting in an interrogation room at the police station with a cup of coffee in front of her. Two officers sat across the table from her, and a camera in the corner recorded everything. Sue sipped her coffee, calmly eyeing the officers. They didn’t stand a chance.

“Let’s start with the easy questions, shall we?” Robert smiled at her thinly. He looked like he’d been stressed recently, unsurprising, since he was the lead investigator in the most notorious case Lima had ever had. “Where were you Monday night, when Kurt Hummel was dropped off in front of his house with near-fatal injuries?” He watched her carefully for a flinch, and Sue gave him one. It was normal and natural to be distressed over a student being injured.

“I was at home the entire night, as you know. I’m aware that I have been under surveillance, and your officers have been far from subtle.” She planned to stick as close to the truth as she could. The fewer lies she had to maintain, the more likely it was that she wouldn’t trip up and say something she shouldn’t.

“And you still have no idea who was responsible for what happened to Kurt then?” Robert asked, resignation clear in his tone.

“No, I do not. Do you have any evidence at all against me?” At their expressions, Sue frowned at them. “You don’t, do you. You’ve been wasting all this time ‘investigating’ me, and I use that term loosely, and all you’ve been going on is the various complaints that jealous people have made over the years that I sometimes take unsavoury action to win. And now there is a young man in the hospital, and you have literally nothing, because even the people who thought that I would abduct a student  _know_  that I would never do something like this. That boy is one of the best people to ever set foot in McKinley High, and I am absolutely enraged that someone would do this to him and that you have so clearly failed him and his family at finding the guilty parties.” Sue didn’t bother to keep the disgust out of her tone. If she was with the police, she could have caught herself three times by now. Incompetence was one of her biggest pet peeves.

Robert drew himself up, anger written across his reddening face, but John placed a hand on his arm before calmly saying, “When we speak to Kurt, what is he going to say?”

“I honestly have no idea, but I know that you won’t be arresting me because of it.” Sue kept her voice at an angry hiss, but it wasn’t hard to maintain. Her hands were shaking with genuine anger. At herself, at everyone who had suspected her for not stopping her, at the police’s pathetic excuse for an investigation. She almost didn’t want to get away with this anymore.

Sue firmly tamped down the fraying edges of her control. No. She was not going to confess. She could make this up in other ways, not by handing herself over to Dumb and Dumber. She let her lip curl in contempt and stared at the men across the table.

“You’re right that we have no proof that you are the responsible party for Kurt’s abduction.” John finally said. “However, we questioned his parents and his friends carefully, and no other suspects were viable. You are the most likely perpetrator, even now.”

“You’re telling me that you couldn’t think of anyone, anyone at all, who wouldn’t want a pro-gay rights congressman from the state of Ohio? Really? Even if you leave aside his father running for Congress, why couldn’t it have been random? Someone could have been just waiting outside of that bar for the right little gay boy to be vulnerable but he fought back and got hurt in the process. The easiest suspect is not always the right one.” The police officers exchanged weary looks before turning their attention back to her. “You didn’t look into that at all, did you? This could have been so many people. It wasn’t me. You fell into the trap of believing media hype and have very possibly ruined my career.”

They believed her, Sue could see it on their faces. Something had worked out the way she planned finally, but it left a disgusting feeling in the pit of her stomach. She wished briefly that one of the plans where everyone would have been relatively happy had worked, but this would be okay too. She just needed Kurt to be mostly intact, and then she could fix things for everyone.

***

Waiting was boring. On the upside, Sue was a much more effective cleaner than Imelda, and her house had never been more spotless. Reports out of the hospital were sparse. She knew that Kurt was awake and talking, but nothing more than that had released.

It was frustrating, and by the day after they announced that he was awake on the news, she was tired of waiting for updates. Sue needed to get in there herself and find out how he was doing, but she also needed to be sneaky about it. His family would not be allowing her in to see him, and she didn’t think the hospital would let her in without permission, even if the police had mostly stopped investigating her as a suspect after she had turned the interrogation around on them.

In the quiet of her own house, and not aloud, never aloud, Sue could admit that she felt guilty. Very guilty, actually. Even if she hadn’t meant to nearly cause Kurt’s death multiple times, she had. The expectation that she had held was that Kurt would be an easy person to hold prisoner, and he had been, Sue supposed. The problem was that holding a person captive was actually quite a difficult proposition, and everything had spiralled out of control so quickly.

At least things seemed to be going as she expected now. The media coverage was slowing. It was almost imperceptible so soon after the election, but Sue was paying close enough attention that when added to her natural skill at everything it was obvious to her. Less media meant less scrutiny of her actions, and Sue was bored of being at home. She wanted to go back to work, particularly since she didn’t have a new job as a member of Congress or any long terms plans except for cleaning up the debris left by the implosion of her ambitions, and that was hardly long term.

All that she had left to do was take care of Kurt. The most important people had at the very least had the seed of doubt planted in regards to her guilt. She was working off the presumption that Kurt would not know that it had been her, because if he pointed his finger at her, it wouldn’t matter what she did leading up to him giving testimony. She would make her plans in the event that he would not be able to incriminate her, and hope that she was right.

There really wasn’t much she could do in regards to Kurt, but she did want to know how he was doing. The sparse news had only ignited her need to know how he was doing, and Sue would need to get inside his hospital room to find out for sure.

The hospital would be quieter at night, and figuring out the timing of when someone new came to stay with Kurt was easy enough, after all, Sue had nothing but time. When she saw all three members of his family leave the hospital Monday night, one week after she had returned Kurt, she knew that it was an opportunity worth seizing. She waited until the evening shift change was over and the parking lot was as quiet as it was getting, then snuck into the building through a loading dock, dodging cameras as she went.

Sue waited for the security guard in the camera control room to get up and go to the bathroom, then stole into the room, unplugged his computer and closed the door behind her when she exited, locking the door with the skeleton key she’d had for years, she couldn’t even remember why she’d originally had it made, and then damaging the lock to prevent him from getting back in easily with a screwdriver.

Now the difficult part- find Kurt’s room without encountering any medical personnel. She knew he would either be in pediatrics or the neurology wing. Hopefully neurology, because there was a desk at the entrance to pediatrics that was always manned. She walked with purpose to the stairs, climbing up to the third floor and emerging into the dim lights of the hospital at night. From there, she used the brute force method of peering into every room in the wing until she finally recognized his boyfriend, who had his face turned toward the door and a form that was presumably Kurt curled up on him.

Sue opened the door fully and slipped in, shutting it silently behind her. She closed the blinds and then just stood at the foot of the bed.

He looked bad. Sue had intellectually known that Kurt wouldn’t exactly look healthy, but he had an enormous gash on the back of his head held together by dark stitching, his cheeks were sunken and bruised, and he looked bony and thin even underneath a blanket and with the other kid’s arms around his torso. She felt sick to her stomach. What was she doing here? What did she hope to accomplish with this? See Kurt, find out how badly she had screwed him up and then what? Tell him everything was going to okay and that she was sorry that he had nearly died and she’d just decided to drop in to say hello?

The other kid stirred on the bed, and Sue caught her breath. She wasn’t sure if she really wanted to talk to Kurt at this point. She hadn’t been arrested, so clearly he didn’t know that he’d been in her basement, and there wasn’t anything that she could do for him to make it better. Sue’s medical prowess extended to dentistry and first aid, not brain surgery, and she couldn’t fix this.

Sue stood there for a moment, eyes locked on Kurt, until the boyfriend starting to wake up. She glanced at the door, and realized that she didn’t have enough time to get out safely before he was awake. She would have to fulfill her original plan of actually talking to them. Unpleasant. She moved around to the side of the bed the call button was on, and leaned in. She’d have to convince him quickly that she wasn’t a threat, and failing that, she’d need to keep him quiet.

When he blinked his eyes open finally, he made a tiny cry of surprise and flinched away from her. Kurt reacted by moving about a little, and Sue cringed. She recovered quickly and put on a fake smile, saying “Hey, buddy!” and watching him shrink back in confusion until he finally seemed to realize what was going on.

He tried to sit up, but jostled Kurt in the process and sank back down onto the pillows, tightening his embrace of Kurt protectively. “What do you want?” His voice trembled, he was just another scared little boy playing grownup, after all.

“Not what you think,” Sue said, keeping her voice low in the hopes that Kurt would not wake up. “I was just worried about him, and wanted to see how he was doing.”

“Why?” The kid looked suspicious, but he wasn’t trying to escape or call for help. Sue could deal with suspicious.

“Because I care about what happens to him, the news isn’t enough for updates, I certainly can’t ask his father while the entire country still believes that I was responsible for this,” Sue gestured at Kurt’s pathetic state, “And he didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve any of it.”

The kid, what was his name?, looked up at her with enormously wide eyes. He didn’t look so scared anymore, but Sue almost felt bad for how easy it was to use her genuine remorse over Kurt being so badly damaged to trick people into believing her about everything else.

Sue looked back down at Kurt, and realized that his eyes were slit open. He nuzzled his face into the other kid’s neck, and he smiled fondly down at him, stroking a hand through Kurt’s remaining hair gently.

“Blaine?” It was barely a mumble, but unmistakeable, and somewhere in the rush of thoughts into Sue’s head came  _So_ that’s _what his name is_ somewhere between  _no don’t wake him up_  and  _what are you still doing here have you completely lost it_.

“Hey, Kurt, someone came to see you. Do you want to wake up a little and talk to her?” He spoke in a gentle, high pitched tone, and Sue waited for Kurt to tell him off for talking to him like he was a child, but nothing came. Instead he blinked himself awake and smiled up at him.

“Hello,” Kurt said before turning his head slightly to look at Sue. His stare was disquieting. He barely blinked and kept his eyes fixed on her, waiting for her to speak, Sue realized after a moment. 

“Hello Porcelain,” she said carefully. “Long time no see.” Well, that was a poor choice of words.

“Hello Coach,” he said slowly, and then stopped, still staring at her. Clearly he was not going to be taking the lead in the conversation, so Sue would have to. She was more than capable of speaking kindly and skirting uncomfortable topics. She was just a little out of practice.

“I thought I would stop by to find out how you were doing firsthand. I’ve been concerned.” There, that sounded nice enough. This was easy.

“My arm’s broken,” Kurt said casually, or as casual as Sue imagined he could sound while slurring like he was drunk.

“And your head? I can’t help but notice the lack of hair.” A horrified expression crossed his face and he pulled his arm out from underneath himself slowly, reaching up to feel the top of his head. Blaine caught his hand and guided it carefully around the edges of the shaved section.

“We told you about it before, Kurt, but I guess you didn’t really hear. It’s not that bad, I promise. It’ll grow back,” he said soothingly, still talking in that same gentle voice. Kurt allowed him to pull his hand away from his head, but still looked distressed.

“I need to get up,” he announced suddenly, and immediately started to push himself upwards. Blaine helped him into a sitting position, but instead of sitting up Kurt slumped back against his chest. Sue observed carefully. Muscular weakness could be attributed to either inactivity or some sort of brain injury. The way he was speaking was almost certainly a result of brain injury, and so was his odd behaviour. Unless he was on a lot of drugs. Sue hoped he was on drugs.

“Why do you need to get up, Kurt? The doctor said you get to try to get up in the morning, how about you wait until then, when there are more people to help?”

“I have to...I don’t remember. I have to go somewhere. You’re not supposed to be here. I don’t want to be here.” Kurt was still making weak little attempts to extricate himself and sit up, and there was a wild look in his eyes. A terrible suspicion began to dawn on Sue. She recognized the desperation of that look. Sue reached for the handy cup of water on the tray beside the bed and held it to Kurt’s lips. Immediately, his protests cut off and he hurriedly gulped at the water.

The boyfriend stared at him in concern, clearly puzzled by the way Kurt was reacting. “Kurt? Are you okay?” Kurt didn’t respond, closing his eyes when the water was gone. Sue motioned to him to be quiet, and he switched his stare to her. Sue carefully pulled Kurt into sitting fully upright and jerked her head to indicate that Blaine should get off the bed. He complied, and she laid Kurt back down, tucking the blanket over him. He kept his eyes shut, and passively lay there when she released him.

“What’s going on?” Blaine hissed at her. “What are you doing?”

“He hasn’t been like this, I take it,” Sue said flatly.

“No, he’s been getting  _better_ , he was talking about college a few hours ago, I don’t understand what’s going on.” He looked at her like she knew the answer, and Sue felt sick to her stomach. Why did he trust her? How dumb was he? And yet, Sue was going to take advantage of him, had already started to.

“Looks like a flashback to me,” she said. “He doesn’t know where he is, and you should probably stay back. He might hit you if you surprise him.”

She leaned back in to the bed, and put a careful hand on Kurt’s to keep him from smacking her. “Talk to him,” she ordered.

Blaine leaned forward, his face pale with fear in the dim light. “Kurt, Kurt, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

Kurt pulled his legs up protectively and screwed his eyes shut tighter. Blaine looked at her desperately for instruction, and she waved her hand for him to continue. “You’re in the hospital, Kurt, not back there. It’s Blaine, I’m right here too. Please open your eyes?” He paused to give Kurt room to react, but he was lost in his own mind, trembling with emotion.

Blaine sniffed back tears, honestly, these kids cried all the time, and leaned in close to Kurt’s ear. He dropped his voice below a whisper, and Sue couldn’t make out what he said next, but she imagined it was suitably sappy. After a few long minutes, Kurt opened his eyes again, but only to reach shakily up for Blaine and start sobbing when Blaine pulled him into his arms.

Sue stepped back to think. Kurt may not consciously remember that she had been there, but he certainly remembered enough deep down inside that her presence could trigger a flashback. The thing she should do was leave and not come back, both because if the boyfriend stopped to think the timing of the entire thing would make him deeply suspicious, and it was obviously upsetting Kurt to have her nearby. She had been responsible for more than enough of his crying already, it was beginning to get tiresome.

Kurt’s tears flagged eventually, and he fell limp and asleep against Blaine moments afterward. The other kid looked up at her, eyes narrow with distrust. Apparently he had given it some thought after all. This could be a problem. “Why would he react like this so suddenly when he was mostly calm before?” he asked sharply. “Was he reacting to you?”

Sue’s thought’s raced, trying to consider a reason, any other reason, why he would’ve reacted so strongly. “Seemed to me like he was reacting to his hair being gone. I don’t know why that would cause a flashback exactly, but it’s possible. I don’t know why he would react to me, other than him being surprised to see me, and I am sorry if that’s the case. I just wanted to check up on him, and his father wouldn’t have let me get close to the hospital, let alone into his room.”

He stared at her, somehow unmoved by her logic. “I thought it could’ve been you, you know,” he said. “But then Kurt came back hurt so bad, and Mr. Schue said you wouldn’t have, and I thought, ‘oh, must’ve been someone else’. But now you’re here, in the middle of the night, and Kurt is scared of you and all I can think is that there must be a reason, a better reason than the things you’ve done before because Kurt isn’t scared of you like that.”

Sue stared right back at him, keeping her face carefully neutral. “Okay, let’s say I did hire some peons to do my dirty work, abduct your boyfriend, and smash his head in before dumping him outside in winter. Let’s say that’s something I’m capable of. In that case, would you also say that I am more than capable of silencing you both right now to protect myself?” She took a step forward into his personal space, watching his eyes grow wide and his mouth drop open slightly with fear and surprise. “Well?”

“You...you wouldn’t.”

“Really, kid? You think that the person who did  _that_ ,” she jerked her head towards Kurt but kept her eyes on Blaine, “wouldn’t be willing to go just a little further?” She paused for a moment to let him stammer before putting him out of his misery. “But you’re right.  _I_  wouldn’t. Because I am not that person.”

He stared at her in silence, eyes still wide and pupils dilated with fear and the dim light. “I’m going to go,” she announced. “Have an uneventful night.”

Sue left him standing there as she casually slipped out of the hospital and back to her car, parked away from the parking lot cameras. By morning, if the boyfriend waited that long to call for help, all of the relevant people would know that she had been to see Kurt in the hospital, but they wouldn’t be able to prove it.

Of all the things that had happened that had not been in her original plan, Kurt sustaining a long term injury was the worst, even worse than losing the election, if she was being honest. She had accounted for a little trauma, easily recovered from, not an actual brain injury that could affect the course of his entire life. She didn’t know how to make up for that. She didn’t even know how to start.

***

Kurt was dreaming. He knew he was, because Blaine had been there before he fell asleep and Blaine wouldn’t let them take him again and he  _knew_  that what he thought was happening wasn’t happening but it didn’t matter because his foot was stuck and he couldn’t use his arms or see or hear or talk and he had to get out. He had to get out.

The metal cuff tore at his skin and took his sock with it as he finally managed to pull his foot through it. He whimpered in pain and shuffled on his knees, not trusting his balance even if he could stand up. It took what felt like an eternity of hitting walls and trial and error, but he finally hit a set of stairs. He breathed in as deeply as he could through his nose and forced himself upright, hoping that he was in a basement and not just a place with really cold floors on the main level.

He carefully climbed up the steep stairs, counting eight before everything felt light, all of a sudden, and he knew he had to get back down the stairs because he was going to fall but he tripped trying to turn around and fell face first.

He felt his arm snap when he landed on a hard corner and sliding down the rest of the way was agonizing until his head hit the concrete floor and every thought he had dissolved into a shower of fireworks.

_It’s not a dream. This isn’t a dream._  His eyes were open and he was looking up at someone. He didn’t know who they were but he was looking at them and they were looking at him and  _why didn’t he know who this was he should he should he should_ -

“Kurt? Kurt?! Please wake up, please-” Blaine fell silent when Kurt opened his eyes. His eyelashes felt clumped together and damp.  _Tears_ , his mind supplied,  _you were crying in your sleep, why can’t you control yourself?_

“Kurt?” Blaine asked when Kurt just lay there and looked up at the ceiling.

“I saw his face.”

“What? Whose face?”

“ _His_  face. I fell down a flight of stairs, and I saw his face but I don’t remember it.” A boiling anger started in Kurt’s gut and worked its way up. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he couldn’t walk, couldn’t move properly at all, that his tongue didn’t work right, that his head hurt all the time, that he wasn’t going to make it to college, he couldn’t think right, how could he even finish high school? Hate for the person who’d done this to him burned him, and he knew who it was but his own stupid brain was betraying him and he just wanted to scream. He squeezed his eyes shut instead and clenched his fist. His hand was weak and trembling, and he hated himself too, for not being strong enough fight back, to stop people from hurting him. People were always hurting him, and he was so, so tired of it.

“Kurt?” Blaine’s concerned voice broke through, and Kurt opened his eyes to stare at him. “Are...are you okay?”

“No!” The word burst out of him before he could even think about censoring himself. “No, I am not okay Blaine!” He didn’t sound like himself, his voice high-pitched still, but slurred as his tongue refused to cooperate fast enough and shaky with rage. “Everything I ever wanted is ruined, I’m ruined! It would have been better if he’d just killed me instead of leaving me like this!” He choked on his last words, and his anger ebbed as Blaine stared down at him in horror.

“You don’t mean that. Please say you don’t mean that.” Kurt looked away obstinately until Blaine grabbed his hand and leaned in close. “Kurt, you are not ruined. You’re going to get better, and even if you weren’t, nothing could ruin you. I know you’re going to get to New York, and you are going to be amazing there. You’re amazing here, right now. Please, please don’t think like that about yourself.”

Kurt averted his eyes again as tears welled up in Blaine’s eyes when he didn’t respond right away. “I don’t, I promise, I’m just upset. Please don’t cry, I didn’t mean it. I promise I didn’t mean it.” He hadn’t meant to say it, at least. He hadn’t meant to upset Blaine.

Blaine sniffled and calmed down after a moment. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry, I’m not crying.” They stayed there in silence for a little bit, and the events of the night before came back to Kurt in a rush.

“Oh, god, did I really have a panic attack in front of Sue Sylvester, or did I dream that too?”

“She said it was a flashback, Kurt, it was really scary. You had no idea where you were.”

Kurt took a second to parse that with what he remembered, and then asked, “Why was she here? She barely cares about me when I’m useful to her.”

“She said that she was worried about you, and I think she was actually sincere. Kurt, you should know that she was the main suspect pretty much the entire time you were gone. Lots of people still think she did it.”

“That’s actually...completely absurd.” Kurt gingerly reached up to his shaved scalp. “This is so far beyond her usual MO that I can’t even express it. She’d never hurt me like this.”

Blaine looked troubled, and when he spoke again, it was carefully. “There was a moment, before she left last night, that I thought she might have. She’s a scary person Kurt.”

“Of course she is, she’s Sue Sylvester. She’s terrifying. She’s not a monster. It wasn’t her.” Kurt relaxed his head back onto the pillow. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell my dad she was here.”

“What? Why on earth wouldn’t we?”

“It’ll just stress him out more, Blaine, this has been really hard on him. And I don’t want to get Coach Sylvester into trouble. She does weird stuff like break into hospitals all the time, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“Kurt, I don’t-”

“And not about the nightmare either, okay? If I remember something useful, I will tell him in a heartbeat, but right now I’d rather give him a little peace of mind. Please, Blaine?” He looked up with his biggest puppy dog eyes, silently begging Blaine to go along with it.

“Okay, I guess, but if she does anything else weird, I am telling him. This doesn’t seem like something to keep secret.”

“Thank you,” Kurt sighed out with relief. He’d put enough stress on his dad without piling on more by making him think he might still be at risk. He craned up just far enough for Blaine to get the message and lean down to kiss him, then lay back and closed his eyes. He was so tired all the time. It was hard work to keep up the appearance of any sort of normality.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve   


When his dad arrived and Blaine took off for school, Kurt pasted a smile on his face and lied about having an uneventful night. His dad looked relieved to hear it, and Kurt knew that he had made the right choice. The physiotherapist arrived almost an hour later, breaking off the awkward conversation that he’d been trying to hold. It had been hard enough to make small talk with his dad. With his brand new speech impediments, it was suddenly that much harder.

The physiotherapist introduced himself as Greg, and said that they would be doing a baseline strength and coordination evaluation. He gave Kurt progressively heavier weights to lift with his good arm, and then with his dad on one side and him on the other, allowed Kurt to stand up. He had to lean heavily on them, and they had a brief misfire when it felt like all the blood in his body rushed to his feet and they had to sit him back down or drop him, but he was standing, mostly. He was proud of himself, and then immediately ashamed that standing was something to be proud of.

His dad noticed his change in mood. Of course he did. “Your head hurting you, kid?”

“No, no, I’m fine, this is good.” Kurt forced a smile. Even if he couldn’t control the way he felt, he could at least act like a normal person. There was no reason for him to not be happy about this. His dad and Greg were both smiling at him.

“You’re a lot stronger than I expected you to be Kurt, this is excellent news for how fast you’ll be back at full strength,” Greg said, adjusting his grip on Kurt’s waist. “We’ll do some tests on coordination in a bit, but since you’re already standing, how about you try to take a few steps? Lean on us as much as you can, and then just move your foot forward.”

Kurt stared down at his feet. He carefully shifted his weight until he was leaning on his dad and the therapist, and moved his hips until he was only standing on one leg. He pushed his foot forward slowly, and nearly took all three of them to the ground when he tried to put too much weight on it and it buckled.

When they’d rebalanced and resettled their grips around his waist, Kurt couldn’t hold back a frustrated, “Why is this so  _hard_?”

“You’ve been sedentary for almost three weeks now Kurt, even without the brain injury you’d be seeing me right now. You just need a little reminder how things work, and a little time to rebuild your strength. You’re doing well.” Greg pushed the IV pole forward a stride, and nodded to him. “Try again.”

The motion came easier the second time, and Kurt managed to drag his other foot forward and balance instead of nearly falling again. He wasn’t holding himself up, but he was suddenly, absurdly pleased with himself. “I did it!” he exclaimed, and his dad’s smile became suddenly fake.  _Too happy_ , Kurt realized as his good mood crashed around him.  _Too happy is as bad as not happy. You have to try harder and then it’ll come easier_.

He was panting for breath, he realized with disgust. A tiny bit of weightlifting and not even two full steps and he was exhausted, blood pounding in his ears. They dragged him back to the bed and perched him up on it.

“That went really well. Whenever you feel up to it and you if you have two people here to help you, go ahead and get up. It’ll be in your schedule as well, but it’ll only help you to do it more often if you’re careful not to overstrain yourself. If you feel like you can’t, don’t try, unless I’m here to supervise, okay?”

Kurt only nodded in acknowledgement, still trying to catch his breath. His dad offered him a cup of water, and he tried to take it, but his hand was shaking with exhaustion. His dad finally wrapped Kurt’s hand around the cup and held it steady in his own hand to help Kurt drink. At least he got to have a hand involved in drinking this time. He squirmed with embarrassment at the thought that he had just spent the better part of a month unable to care for himself even a little.

When he was finished, he looked up at Greg, who was scribbling notes in a folder. “Take a bit of a breather Kurt, you look like you could use it. I’ll finish up my notes and then we can move on.” He backed off and sat in a chair against the wall.

Kurt watched him for a moment, swinging his legs absently, and then his vision greyed out and he was in sharp, sudden agony. It was worse than any other headache he’d had, ever, and when his vision cleared again he could barely focus his eyes against the pain.

“Do you want to lie down for a bit, kiddo?” his dad asked quietly. “You’re not looking so hot.”

Kurt couldn’t even nod before he was sagging forward. His dad’s arms were around him in an instant, and Greg was there only seconds later, helping his dad to push him up and lay him down on his side. His IV pulled slightly but uncomfortably at his arm as a gentle counterpoint to the throbbing in his head before Greg pulled the stand closer, and-

His dad was patting his cheek, trying to get his attention, Kurt realized. The pain eased for moment, letting him talk. “’M’okay,” he mumbled, then swallowed and said more clearly, “I’m okay. I don’t know what happened.”

“Does it just hurt, or are you dizzy too?” His dad was obviously concerned, but Kurt’s eyes were drifting shut despite his efforts to focus. “Kurt,” he said sharply. “Stay awake. We’re getting a doctor, okay? Just stay awake until then.” Kurt forced his eyes open again, but his vision was just a mixture of unfocused blurs and then it was dark again, even if it wasn’t quiet, and Kurt let himself go.

***

Kurt was sitting on a steep set of wooden stairs. It was nice. Peaceful, if unfamiliar. Someone brushed by him, and Kurt looked up incuriously to see himself, face covered by a leather hood and wrapped up in a straightjacket that looked exactly like his own. He watched as the other him wavered and fell down the stairs, lying completely still at the bottom, even after Kurt knew he was awake again.

It was very quiet. Kurt knew it should be loud, but it was better quiet. Another person brushed by him, going down the stairs this time, not up, and Kurt leaned forward to see better. This was a very interesting place to sit. The person was taking off the hood. Kurt was glad. He wanted to see his face.

When the hood was off though, Kurt couldn’t remember why he wanted to see it so badly. His face was bloody and marked by fingernails, and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut. The other person touched his face, and then they were talking, Kurt knew that they were supposed to be talking, but everything was a blur.

He was in the back of a van, watching himself desperately try to fight off an enormous man. The man’s mouth moved, and then he grabbed the other Kurt’s face and smashed it into the floor of the van. The scene skipped, and then he watching himself pull off a blindfold, only to freeze at the mention of a name. An important name. Kurt heard it, but it didn’t register, it only washed over him like a wave.

He was back on the stairs, but he was gone. So was the other person. Kurt stood up, and followed. He knew where he was. The only other part of the room in focus was a door, and he opened it, slipping inside.

He was naked except for a blindfold and freshly damp from a bath, lying on a bed with a blanket over him. The other person wasn’t there, but would be back soon to dress him, Kurt knew. Kurt would try to fight her off, and then she would pin him down and strap him back into a straightjacket anyway and Kurt wouldn’t remember any of it.

Kurt blinked, and then everything was gone.

***

“Blood pressure is at eighty over sixty and holding. All other vitals are good, heart rate is climbing...”

He couldn’t move. A bright light was shining in his eyes, and there were strangers all around him, and he was held perfectly immobile.

“He’s awake,” a faraway voice observed, and then a person was leaning in over him, haloed by the light. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be okay, just re-”

***

She looked up from where she was pinning him down across the room, meeting his gaze. “Hello Porcelain.”

_Oh_.

***

Kurt woke up to his dad looking concerned and murmuring encouragement while his head pounded with a dull pain. It was beginning to be almost familiar.

“Daaaaaaad?” he drawled out, lips and tongue feeling unwieldy. He smacked his lips a few times, feeling confused.

“Hey,” his dad said quietly. Kurt blinked to refocus his eyes past him. There were people all over the room, asleep on chairs, for the most part. “Hey, bud, are you listening to me?”

“Mmmmm...yes?” Kurt looked from Rachel, asleep on Finn’s arm, back to his dad. He looked terrible. Exhausted, with deep dark circles under his eyes. “You look tired.”

“Yeah, well you gave us quite a scare. Do you remember what happened at all? They said you woke up for a bit there.”

“I was in a basement,” Kurt said. “There was a me there. I was in a van too.”

His dad looked confused. “What? No, you’re in the hospital, bud, you never left. There was a complication and they had to operate again. Are you feeling okay? Are you dizzy?”

“I’m okay. I don’t want to go back there though. I fell down the stairs,” he said mildly, lifting his broken arm for emphasis.

His dad looked at him for a long minute. Kurt didn’t know how much clearer he could make it if he still didn’t understand. He could feel sleep calling to him again, and his eyelids were slowly sliding shut.

“Kurt, what exactly are you talking about? When were you in a basement?” His dad’s voice dragged him back up to awareness, but only for a minute.

“Before,” he mumbled, keeping his eyes closed. “Tired.”

“Okay.” Kurt barely heard it, but it was comforting. “Okay, you go back to sleep, and I’ll be here when you wake up again. Promise.”

***

Kurt’s breathing evened out as he fell asleep again, and Burt slumped back in his chair. He had been doing that for hours, waking up only to mutter nonsense and then falling asleep again. He had nearly made sense this time, but Burt couldn’t tell if it was because he hadn’t slept or because Kurt was getting more coherent.

He closed his eyes for just a minute. When Kurt had collapsed forward, Burt had thought that he was just having another headache, which weren’t exactly rare for him, paired with a dizzy spell and they had helped him to lie down on his side to wait for him to recover. And then Kurt had stiffened under his hands, and Greg had pulled Burt back just as Kurt began to convulse. It had been the single scariest thing Burt had ever seen, and the sight of them whisking Kurt away again came close to the top of the worst things he had ever seen.

And then a doctor had come back to tell him that they had missed a badly damaged blood vessel on the original scans that had ruptured when Kurt had tried to walk and Kurt was bleeding into his brain and they were going to have to operate again to save his life.

It had been a long, long day. It was nearing three in the morning now, and all the people who had crammed into the hospital room were sound asleep, except for him. Kurt snuffled in his sleep, and Burt jerked back upright, checking to make sure he wasn’t waking up again. Kurt stayed still, and Burt settled back down in his chair.

He didn’t know when he fell asleep, but he woke up to a nurse checking Kurt’s monitors and IV bag. “How-” he started, voice rough with sleep. He cleared his throat quietly and tried again. “How is he?”

“Everything looks pretty good,” she said. “How many more times has he woken up? Was he more lucid?”

“Just once more, and he was close to lucid, I think. He seemed to be responding to what I was saying to him, but his responses didn’t really make sense.” The doctor had said that there wasn’t further damage, and that it looked like it really only started bleeding dangerously when he had stood up, but Kurt seemed like he was completely out of it and Burt was sick with worry.

Burt looked down to check on Kurt, and was startled by the visible glint of his eyes. “He’s awake again.” He repeated it, more urgently, before taking a deep breath and forcing himself to calm down. “Hey kid,” he said calmly. It was getting easier and easier to pretend that he wasn’t shaking with a mixture of dread and anticipation whenever Kurt woke up. “Can you hear me?”

Kurt woke up bit by bit, blinking and moving his long limbs aimlessly. “You were here before too,” he observed slowly, stumbling over the words. “You need sleep too Dad.”

“I sleep, don’t you worry about that,” Burt said, leaning forward to stroke the hair off of Kurt’s forehead. “Do you remember waking up earlier?”

“Yeah. I was in a basement, Dad. I fell down the stairs.” Kurt sounded innocent and so, so young, and in that moment, Burt knew that he was capable of murder. If he met the person who had reduced his snarky, sweet son to someone who spoke and reacted and reached for a comforting embrace like a much younger child with only flashes of his real personality shining through occasionally, he wasn’t going to be able to hold himself back. Burt knew that it was partly the painkillers Kurt was on that was causing it right now, but even if he did eventually come back to acting like his old self all the time, Burt was never going to forget this.

“When did you fall down the stairs, Kurt? Do you remember?” Burt kept his tone carefully level, and the nurse nodded encouragingly at him. He had almost forgotten that she was there, but appreciated the support.

Kurt wasn’t paying attention to him though; he was off in his own world. “I didn’t want to tell you. I made Blaine say he wouldn’t.”

“Kurt, buddy, you have to slow down. Tell me what?” Burt’s heart was pounding in his chest.

“Coach Sue was here. Blaine said she came to check on me because she was worried.” Kurt looked him square in the eye finally, face solemn and voice monotone. “That’s not why she was here though.”

Burt struggled with the different questions he wanted to blurt out, finally settling on, “Why was she here, Kurt?”

Kurt smiled up at him, and when he spoke, it was in a whisper like he was a child sharing a secret. “I don’t think she meant to hurt me. She didn’t hit my head, and I fell down the stairs. But she was there, Dad, I saw her.”

“Where is ‘there’, Kurt? Where did you see her?” Burt knew, he  _knew_  what Kurt would say. But he needed an absolute confirmation.

Kurt kept looking at him, wide eyed and ingenuous. “The basement. She was there.”

Burt was up and out of his chair so fast he knocked it over. Kurt flinched away, and he quickly leaned back down. “Hey buddy, no, I’m not mad at you, it’s okay, don’t be scared. I just have to go and take care of something. Carole’s here though, she can talk to you for a little bit. Would you like that?”

Kurt nodded, just a little, and looked past Burt to where people were waking up, disturbed by the clatter of the chair. Carole was the first one fully awake and upright, and she approached slowly to give Kurt a chance to adjust.

“I have to go,” Burt muttered to her.

Carole looked at him askance, then picked up his chair and sat in it. “Hey, Kurt!” she said in a bright but gentle voice. “I hope you’re feeling better this morning. You look much better.” To Burt, she muttered, “Why do you have to go? What could be so important?”

Burt whispered in her ear, not wanting any of the various kids in the room to overhear, “He remembered that Sue Sylvester was there while he was gone, and apparently she was here at some point. I’m going ask Blaine if he knows anything, and then I’m going to go and talk to her before getting the police involved.”

Carole turned away from Kurt to stare at him in shock. She shook herself to recover, and then covered her mouth against Kurt’s curious stare before replying. “If she did, if she is responsible for all of this, Burt, you shouldn’t be there. I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back from attacking her. How can you?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Burt said grimly, straightening. Kurt was looking at him again, obviously confused. Burt leaned in to kiss him on the forehead. “I’ll be back soon, buddy, you won’t even know I’m gone.”

Carole stared at him hard for a moment, but all trace of the expression was gone in favour of tenderness when she turned back to Kurt. “Take Blaine out in the hall to talk, okay? And keep it quiet.”

Burt leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Thank you.” The kids were looking at him nervously when he turned around and grabbed his jacket out of the pile on the floor. “Blaine, I need to talk you. In the hall.”

The kid nearly jumped out of his skin in his rush to obey, and he followed Burt out of the room. “Ms. Sylvester showed up here night before last,” he said, before Burt could even get a word out. “She seemed really sincere when she said that she was worried about Kurt, and Kurt didn’t want to worry you, so we didn’t tell you, and then this happened, and I know that I should have told you sooner but I didn’t want to pile anything else on you and I’m really sorry.” He took a deep breath when he was finished spilling his guts, and looked up at Burt nervously.

“...Okay,” Burt said. “She was here then.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what I wanted to know. You can go back inside now.” Burt turned and walked away, leaving Blaine standing there. He didn’t know what he was going to do when he found Sue Sylvester, and he knew that Carole was placing a lot of trust in him not doing something that would get him put in jail, but he wasn’t sure that he would be able to stop himself.

***

Carole Hudson gently stroked her stepson’s hand while he talked. The nurse that had been in the room when she awoke had excused herself, and Blaine hadn’t come back from the hallway, but she could see him through the blinds, and the other kids were whispering to each other behind her, leaving her alone beside Kurt. They’d managed to send most of the kids home, but a stubborn few had stayed, not wanting to leave and risk not being there if something else went wrong.

The whispers died down as they apparently nominated Finn to approach her. Kurt stopped murmuring about a basement and switched to looking at Finn. “Hey Kurt,” Finn said. “We’re all really glad you’re awake and stuff.” He looked back and forth between Carole and Kurt. “So, um, where’d Burt go? He seemed pretty upset.”

“He just had to go and take care of something, honey,” Carole said quickly. “We’ll tell you all about it when he comes back, okay?”

Finn looked suspicious, and Carole patted his hand warningly. Kurt had literally just had a brain hemorrhage, and they didn’t need to excite him. “Okay,” Finn agreed finally. “That’s cool. How are you now?” he asked Kurt, who was still looking at him quietly.

“Okay,” Kurt said slowly. “My head hurts a little, but I’m not alone in a basement.”

Finn carefully patted his forearm. “Good, that’s good, we’ll stay so you aren’t alone.” He looked at Carole with same familiar look of puppy like confusion that he’d had since he was a baby and didn’t quite understand what was happening.

Carole took pity on him finally when Kurt stopped paying attention to them in favour of looking past them at Mike, Tina and Mercedes, who for their part were looking back just as wide eyed. “You were here when the doctor was talking, Finn. She said that the painkillers might make him a little confused, and it looks like he’s remembered something about a basement, which is what Burt went to check on. It’s okay that you don’t really get some of what he says. I’m sure he’ll be able to explain it better later.”

“I’m explaining noooow,” Kurt whined, “you’re just not listening to me.”

“Get my phone, Finn, it’s in my coat.” Finn dug through the pile of winter jackets on the floor to Carole’s at the bottom, and found her phone. Carole set it to record and held it on her lap. “I’m sorry, baby, we weren’t trying to ignore you, I promise. How about you explain again and we’ll listen extra hard?”

Kurt pouted, but folded under at the prospect of having an audience hang on to his every word. “I was in a basement,” he informed them. “I fell down the stairs and I saw it.”

“How did you fall down the stairs?” Carole asked carefully. If she had a recording where Kurt named Sue Sylvester as his abductor, she would be justified in calling the police, and maybe they could find her before Burt did. Carole trusted him, but the look in his eyes when he had left had scared her. It had apparently scared Blaine too, judging by the way that he had yet to re-enter Kurt’s room.

“I lost my balance.” Kurt blinked up at her and Carole felt immediately foolish. He was barely rational and high on painkillers. What did she think she was going to gain by giving a recording of the conversation to the police?

“Did you hurt yourself when you did?” Finn asked, still standing beside her.

“Yeah,” Kurt sighed, lifting his broken arm slightly and dropping it back to the bed. “My arm. I hit my head too. It really hurt.”

“Do you remember anything after that, Kurt? It could be really important,” Carole pressed gently.

“Coach Sylvester was there. She gave me a bath and wrapped up my arm and blindfolded me, but then I forgot that she did.” He gave a tiny jerk like he was trying to sit up. “Where did Dad go? I need to see him. He must have been so worried.”

“He was, Kurt, but he’s okay now. He’ll be back soon.” Carole stroked over his hand gently, taking it in hers when his breathing sped up and the dullness began to fade from his eyes, replaced by recognition.

 “Oh, god. Oh my god, how could she do that? She did, didn’t she?” Kurt’s voice was tiny, and pleading, but more Kurt-like than it had sounded since he’d woken up the first time.

“It looks that way, but please don’t worry about that right now Kurt, you just got out of surgery, you need to try to stay calm, okay?” Carole was feeling a little panicky herself. That woman had been in this room with Kurt and Blaine, and if she had already done this much to Kurt, they were so, so lucky that she hadn’t decided to make sure Kurt couldn’t talk.

“Oh my god,” Kurt whimpered again. “How could she do this?” He wriggled to push his face into his pillow, but stilled suddenly with a hiss of pain.

Carole pressed the call button as Kurt began to cry in earnest, and a nurse showed up within minutes to administer a fresh dosage of painkillers. She carefully wiped off his cheeks when his tears began to slow, and he fell limp against the pillows.

She stroked his forehead for a moment to avoid having to answer the questions the other kids had. When she looked up, Finn was staring at Kurt, but everyone else was looking at her, including Blaine, who had come back in at some point when she was distracted by Kurt. She fumbled with her phone, turning off the recording.

“Burt went to see Coach Sylvester?” Finn finally asked.

“Yes,” Carole said. There was absolutely no point in lying.

“When he found out that Karofsky threatened to kill him last year, he was really scary, Mom. If she did this to Kurt, Burt would...” Finn trailed off, either not knowing how or not wanting to finish his sentence.

“Yes, he might,” Carole said, voice calm in a way she wasn’t. “I trust him though. He knows that Kurt needs him here. It’ll be fine, Finn. Take a seat.” She turned back to Kurt and hummed a lullaby, running her fingers through his messy hair.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen   


It had been over a day since Sue had visited the hospital, and she had heard absolutely nothing about it since. When neither the police nor an angry Burt Hummel showed up at her door, Sue concluded that maybe Porcelain hadn’t actually told anyone that she had been to see him. Her curiosity at the thought of both Kurt and his boyfriend keeping their mouths shut stuck in her head, and it was still at the forefront of her mind when there was a hard knocking at her door at five in the morning. Her curiosity was suddenly and uncomfortably satisfied when she opened the door to find Burt Hummel in the pre-dawn darkness.

He looked at her with a strange expression on his face, and Sue cringed inwardly. He would be a lot harder to lie to than Will, or the kids, or even the police had been, by virtue of having the combination of life experience and more than two brain cells to rub together. He stood there for a long minute evaluating her before asking, “May I come in?”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Sue said coolly, turning and walking back to the kitchen without checking to see if he was following. Her coffee maker was running on its timer, and had just finished brewing a pot. She poured two cups and sat down at the table, setting one down across from her. “How is your son today, Mr. Hummel?”

“Been better,” he grunted, sitting down at the table and slinging his coat over the back of his chair but not touching the cup of coffee.

When he made no effort to elaborate, Sue said, “Sad to hear it,” and took a long sip of coffee. It was a little too hot in her mouth, just the way she liked it. Burt didn’t reply, and Sue patiently waited for him to speak.

“He had a brain hemorrhage yesterday morning,” Burt said suddenly, meeting her gaze. Sue nearly dropped her mug, but regained control of herself in time to right it. Coffee slopped over her hand anyway, and then Sue did drop it with a hiss of pain. She rinsed her hand off in the sink, looking up to see Burt staring at her in the reflection of the dark kitchen window.

“Is he-” Sue stopped. There was no delicate way to phrase her thoughts, and she sensed that she was in a very delicate situation, where saying the wrong thing could end in disaster. She waited for him to continue instead.

“He’s awake, and was talking again when I left. He was fine, he was walking, and then suddenly he was having a seizure and they were taking him away for emergency brain surgery. It still doesn’t feel real. None of this does. When I got out of bed yesterday morning, I half expected to find him in the kitchen getting ready for school.”

Sue stayed facing the window, watching his reflection closely. Common ground. She could do this. “Yes. Once, just after my sister passed away, I found myself halfway to the facility she lived at before remembering that there was no point anymore.”

“I remember when that happened,” Burt said in a neutral tone. “Kurt nearly ran himself ragged between planning the funeral and keeping up with his glee club commitments. I was proud of him and Finn for helping you out though.”

“You should be. I was very grateful for him making a hard time easier. Your son is a good kid. He didn’t deserve this.” Shame forced Sue to finally look down from Burt’s steady look, her gaze stopping at her hands. Her right one had an angry looking red burn mark on it from the coffee.

“No, he didn’t,” Burt agreed. “But it happened.” He paused for a moment before finally getting down to business. “You came to see him, night before last. What happened?”

Sue fixed her gaze on her hands. Lying would not work. Blaine had presumably been the one to rat her out, and Burt would not take her word over his. “I was worried,” she said. “So I found your son’s hospital room to check on him. He was asleep with his boyfriend, and the boyfriend woke up. I convinced him that I wasn’t going to hurt either of them, and he woke up Kurt. I spoke to him briefly before he had a panic attack, and then he cried himself back to sleep. Then I left.”

“What in particular were you worried about?” Burt’s tone was low, dangerous, and made Sue realize the significance of Kurt being awake and  _talking_ , and of Burt having apparently left him there just after something going very wrong. It meant that Burt was not necessarily only here to confront her about breaking into his son’s hospital room.

“Kurt’s a smart kid, but you don’t need me to tell you that,” Sue said carefully. “I was worried that his injuries would affect his future prospects.”

“Well, they have,” Burt said bluntly. “He’s not likely to graduate high school on time, and even if he does, he’s not going to be healthy in time to audition for the school he wants. That’s assuming that he will ever be able to finish high school. They haven’t been able to check how his reading and writing skills have been affected because they can’t risk upsetting him if he can’t read. Does that  _worry_  you?” he spat out.

Sue looked up again. Burt was staring at her accusingly, and  _he knew_. From his words, it was possible that he was just angry about the hardships his son would face, but the way he was looking at her...he knew. Or he at least believed strongly enough that she was not going to be able to convince him otherwise. Her mind raced, looking for a way out.

“I wish that it was different,” she said finally. “I’ve been fond of him, at times, and I feel that he could have been successful in whatever he chose. I think that he will find a way to succeed again, despite this.”

“You’re talking like you care about him, like you have a right to.” Burt’s eyes were lined with exhaustion, but he was still looking at her like a she was a cockroach and he was just waiting to find a shoe to crush her.

“Why are you here?” Sue asked, giving in to the inevitable. They could dance around each other for hours, but if neither of them addressed the elephant in the room, they weren’t going to get anywhere.

“After the surgery, Kurt kept waking up and babbling about the same things- being in a basement and not liking it, falling down the stairs, and being in a van. When he woke up for real, he told me that you were in that basement with him, but you didn’t mean to hurt him, that he fell down the stairs all on his own, that you didn’t bash- cause his head injury. I’m here to find out if that’s true.”

“And what do you hope to accomplish from this?” Sue asked. “Whether I was there with him or not, I would deny it. Why not just call the police and tell them?”

“Because the cops won’t help. You’ve never been arrested, never charged, for any crime you’ve committed. You were suspended from teaching, and then suddenly you’re back at the school again. You punched an old woman in the face, it was  _filmed_ , and nothing came of that. For all I know, the cops have unimpeachable proof that you’re guilty and they’re holding it back, because they’re afraid of you, I don’t know. I’m not afraid of you though. Not even a little.”

“Okay, you’re not afraid of me. Why are you here?” Sue pressed.

“For the truth. You owe my son that much.” Burt was deathly calm, and Sue felt the first twinges of an uneasy fear building.

Burt stood up and looked around. “Where’s the basement?” he asked. “Through here?” He tried the basement door. It rattled against the lock, and Burt turned back to her, raising an eyebrow. He left the obvious question of  _Why does your basement lock from the outside_  unspoken and flipped the deadbolt.

When he opened the door and peered down into the dark, Sue had to suppress the sudden panicky urge to shove him down the stairs. Instead she turned on the basement light for him. “What are you hoping to find down there? I can guarantee that you won’t find it.”

Burt clomped down the stairs and looked around. Sue followed more slowly. He inspected the bare studs of the unfinished walls, pausing where Kurt had been chained to look at the abrasions on the wood. He apparently didn’t see the significance of them, because he moved onto the bedroom and tiny bathroom, poking around thoroughly. Sue stopped halfway down the stairs to observe.

When he came back out, a frustrated look on his face, only the possibility that everything could still go very wrong kept a smile off of Sue’s. “I’m sorry for how Kurt was damaged while I was responsible for him,” she said truthfully. She had certainly lied about everything else, she’d freely admit that to herself, but she really did feel guilty. “It was not my intention at all. But I won’t be going to prison for it. There’s no evidence, and with Kurt’s testimony as vague as you described, I don’t think the police will even press charges.”

Burt’s face reddened at the tacit admission of guilt. “You, you...” He trailed off, hands clenched into fists at his side. He was either about to attack her, or he wasn’t going to. Sue waited for him to come to a decision, and when he exploded in action, charging towards the stairs, she was ready. She turned and bolted up the stairs, slamming and locking the heavy door behind her.

Burt banged on the door, presumably trying to break through for a while, but eventually quieted down. With him on the other side of a thick locked door, Sue felt any fear she had of him evaporate like it hadn’t ever been there. “Are you calmer now?” Sue asked. “I’m honestly getting bored, and I’d like to be able to let you out so we can discuss this.”

“What is there to discuss?” he asked flatly. “You kidnapped my teenage son and abused him for two weeks to try to get to me. He nearly  _died_  you  _psychopath_ , and he still could.”

Clearly he was not calm, if he was still harping on that. “It was an accident! He wasn’t supposed to get hurt, just a little traumatized.” Sue took a deep breath. Maybe she could bribe him with information, if she couldn’t convince him.

“I could tell you what happened to him. Everything. He’s never going to remember, but he’s going to want to know. All you have to do is control yourself when I let you out.”

Sue let her breath out slowly through her teeth, but Burt wasn’t biting. “Or you can let me out now, and when you tell the cops the entire story you can get the punishment you deserve and he’ll find out the truth.”

Sue cocked her head to the side. Well, she could see where Kurt got his naiveté from. “Burt, that’s not going to happen. Be reasonable. You honestly think that it’ll help your son if I’m behind bars? When he’s doing his speech therapy, would you inspire him by saying ‘Try harder kiddo, remember that Sue Sylvester is in prison for destroying your future!’ I don’t think so.”

“I  _am_ being reasonable, you’re just absolutely insane!” Burt shouted through the door. Sue rolled her eyes. “It’ll help him to know that you’re never going to hurt him again. It’ll help him to know that you’re suffering for this, even if it’s nowhere near the scale he is.”

“How could that help? I wasn’t the one that hurt him in the first place, and he knows that. I won’t be coming after him again, so there’s that off the list. As for suffering, well, I feel pretty bad about this. That counts, I think. Prison wouldn’t be much of a hardship for me anyway, but it’s a moot point because I’m not going to confess.” She would own prison, but that didn’t mean she had any desire to spend time there. The last week had been so full of successful manipulations that her self-confidence was at a year-long high. It had been pathetically easy, and Sue Sylvester was going to get back on top. It was only a matter of time.

 “Here’s how I see this playing out, Burt. You go to the police. You tell them that Kurt’s remembered that I was there when he was in the basement. Heck, tell them that you came here and I confessed to you. I was just talking to them the other day, and they still don’t have any evidence against me at all. It’ll be poor brain-damaged Kurt’s word against mine, and then his angry, overprotective father’s word against mine again. You won’t win, and eventually people will forget about this and I will rise to the top again, and everything that’s happened to your son will still have happened.  _Nothing will change._ I could point out to the police where I chained Kurt to the wall, I could tell them exactly what drugs I used to keep him docile, how I plugged his ears with cotton balls and wax to keep him from recognizing my voice, I could show them the hood I used to blindfold him and keep him quiet the first few days. It won’t make him better. Nothing will.”

There was no sound from the other side of the door for a long while, until he hissed out in a threatening tone, “I will see you dead.” He had probably thought she was taunting him then, rather than spelling out the facts as she saw them. There was no help for it though, she couldn’t take anything back.

“You’re the one with the heart problems, Burt,” Sue replied coolly, “and I doubt that you’re planning on killing me, because then you’d be going to prison, and Kurt needs you. If that’s how you react to the vaguest details, I think it’s for the best I don’t tell you the nitty gritty of what went on here. I’d hate to upset you into having another heart attack and deprive Kurt of his father. It’s my understanding that artificial hearts are not as robust as baboon hearts. Maybe you should look into that for your next transplant.”

She banged on the door hard in goodbye. “Well, this has been a lively chat. I’m going to leave you to stew for awhile, and I’m sure that someone will let you out eventually. I would, but I’m pretty sure that you’d try to remove my face with your bare hands, and I’m rather attached to it.”

Sue turned and began to walk away. “Where are you going?” Burt shouted, banging on the door. “We’re not done here, you coward!”

She stopped and turned back. If he refused to understand her actions, she was done trying to explain them. “Yes we are, Burt, or at least you and I are. Good luck in your new career, and give my best to your family. The charges aren’t going to stick, and you’re just going to be piling even more stress on your son by pursuing them. To answer your question though, I’m going to the police station to tell them that you came here and threatened me, and that I only escaped physical harm by tricking you into the basement and locking the door.” She was quite proud of that idea, actually. She wouldn’t press charges, of course, that would just be cruel, but it was a nice way of turning things around off of herself.

She heard Burt grab the doorknob and try to force the door again, swearing when it refused to budge. “God damn it, you can’t do this, why-”

Sue slammed the front door behind her. She needed a chance to think. Was there a way to calm Burt down so he would listen? She considered what she would have done if confronted with someone who had done something like this to Jean, and dismissed the thought. She shouldn’t even have tried to reason with him. He was not Sue though, and if she let him out at this point, he would probably just leave. After that first burst of anger had passed, he wouldn’t have actually hit her.

It wasn’t a good idea to go to the police and complain about him threatening her. The town’s sympathies lay overwhelmingly with the Hummels, and she wouldn’t stand a chance in the realm of public opinion if it got out that she’d been having altercations with Kurt’s family. She wondered how many terrible ideas she’d followed through on when the impulse occurred to her rather than slowing down and thinking. She could think of at least one, and she congratulated herself on preventing a second.

Sue turned and headed back inside the house. She unlocked the basement door, and stepped back just in time to avoid it smacking her in the face as Burt barged out. He stopped dead and stared at her like he was waiting for something. Sue couldn’t tell what.

“Why?” he asked suddenly. “At least that. Tell me why.”

“I thought it was a good idea,” Sue said honestly. “I didn’t think it would be as bad as it ended up being. I thought that you would pull out of the election, paving the way for me to win, and I could let Kurt go when I did, and nothing would come of it. And then nothing happened the way I thought it would, and I really didn’t mean for him to be hurt. And I’m sorry that I did hurt him, even if I didn’t do it myself.”

“If you’re sorry, why are you working so hard to weasel your way out of trouble? Accept responsibility for your actions if you know you screwed up. Are you that in love with manipulating people that you can’t ever stop?”

Burt’s voice was full of venom, but his face told a different story. He knew that he’d lost and now he was just floundering for answers.

“Well, long story short, yes, I am. I don’t like being punished for my actions by other people. When I do make a mistake, I prefer to make up for it by myself. And I will. I can promise you-”

“You stay away from my family, or I will make you sorry.” He didn’t move closer, but he looked at her in a way that promised retribution.

Sue didn’t take a step back, but she briefly considered it. “I think we’re done here. You’re going to make an excellent Congressman, Burt. And I don’t mean that as a knock at your intelligence.”

Burt snagged his coat off the chair he’d slung it over and stalked out, slamming the door shut behind him. Sue cleaned up the puddle of coffee on the table and dumped out the untouched cup she’d poured for Burt, humming to herself.

She’d lost the election, but somehow she’d come out the other side of this entire disaster of her own making nearly scot-free. Sue smiled as she wiped down the cups. She’d won.

***

Burt closed the door of his truck with more force than necessary and tipped his head forward onto the steering wheel.

She’d admitted to it. Burt knew that she was guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt, but he had nothing he could use against her. Except for his phone that he had left sitting in his jacket pocket, recording the entire conversation.

“Not quite your word against mine, is it Sue?” he asked rhetorically, closing his eyes and willing his hands to stop shaking.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen   


Kurt awoke to an empty room and an itchy nose. He slowly and carefully lifted his hand to scratch it and then slid a little higher and rubbed at his hair. He cringed at the greasy feeling, and wiped his hand off on his hospital gown before relaxing again.

As had become habit when he awoke, Kurt took a careful inventory of himself. Mild to moderate headache, arm still broken, and a general feeling of malaise, check. He tilted his face down to examine his bare arm, and at least the bruises were healing. That was something.

Kurt wished that his bed faced the door so he could at least see what was going on. No one would tell him anything. The doctor had said that he wasn’t supposed to get upset, that he should just focus on resting and recovering. None of his friends had been alone with him since Coach had shown up, and Dad and Carole had clearly given Finn pretty firm instructions to keep his mouth shut because every freaking time Kurt tried to find out what had happened when his dad went to see Coach Sylvester he changed the subject to Call of Duty. Kurt was going to snap his disc in half as soon as he got home.

Everyone was so worried about stressing him out. Just because he’d had one painkiller fuelled nervous breakdown when he realized exactly what his memories of Coach Sylvester meant didn’t mean he was tiptoeing in the edge of one all the time. They wouldn’t even let him read the news, keeping everything, including cell phones, well away from him. Did they think he hadn’t noticed? Really? He had “brain contusions of various degrees of severity” sure, but he wasn’t dead. He was so bored that he felt like he might as well be though.

At least he had more details about what had happened to him than he had when he’d first woken up in this hospital bed. There were still wide spans of time he didn’t remember though, and lots of what he did remember was hazy. Even when he knew that he had been terrified or furious, thinking about it was like watching a poorly acted movie. Kurt could see what emotions were supposed to be there, but what he saw didn’t inspire them in him. It was a strange feeling, but he was grateful for it. It made everything much easier.

Kurt sighed and reached out for the small medicine ball on the bedside table. He’d just been given it yesterday, after two days of extremely close monitoring after the operation and the first CT scan he’d had that he’d been conscious for. The exercises were one of the few things breaking the monotony of being stuck in bed, and even if Kurt did get embarrassingly exhausted quickly, at least he felt like he was doing something to get better.

He squirmed into a pseudo-sitting position, made more difficult because sitting up from lying on his side was much harder than he had expected. Usually there was someone there to help him, and Kurt paused to lean on a pillow and consider why there wasn’t anybody there. It was the first time that he remembered waking up alone since he’d been in the hospital, and one of either Dad or Carole had been in the room at all times since finding out Coach Sylvester had visited.

Kurt rolled onto his back and turned his head. The blinds on the windows were shut, and so was the door. Kurt held his breath to listen closely, but he couldn’t hear anything other than the quiet beeping of the heart monitor.

No, they wouldn’t have left him alone. Kurt shook his head in denial and looked around the room again, but no one magically appeared. His breath came shorter, and he whined a little at the sudden burst of panic. “Dad?” he called. His voice came thin and reedy in the empty room, and he clumsily crossed his arms in front of chest, drawing his knees up defensively. He dropped the medicine ball in the process, and it bounced slightly before settling on the bed beside him. Kurt glanced down at it when it rolled into his hip, and then saw his dad’s cell phone sitting on the chair beside the bed with his coat over the back.

“He’s not gone, you dummy,” he said, trying to reassure himself by speaking out loud. “He had to go to the bathroom or something. He’ll be back. You can’t expect people to drop everything just because you don’t want to be alone.” It wasn’t working. Kurt closed his eyes and focused on his breathing, trying to at least slow it down, even if he couldn’t calm down. He realized his mistake when he automatically tensed up further. His arms were strapped down. He couldn’t see.

_You aren’t there_.  _Your arms are crossed, not tied. You closed your eyes. It’s not a blindfold. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it stop it stop it._

Kurt’s eyes flew open and he jerked his arms apart. He slumped back, still breathing hard. He blinked until his tears stopped, and then reached for the phone. He could call somebody. That would be almost the same as someone being there, and that would help. Hearing a voice would help. He had to push himself over to the very edge of the bed to reach it, and by the time he’d grabbed it and lain back down on his side in the middle of the bed, he felt achy and gross with sweat.

It took him three trips to flip open the phone, and he squinted at the keypad, trying to remember the speed dials or at least find the contacts list. His dad just have upgraded like everyone else, but no, “this phone works fine, Kurt, I don’t need a new one.”

Eventually Kurt just hit 2 and pressed talk, hoping for the best. Carole picked up on the third ring, sounding groggy. “Burt? Is something wrong?”

“It’s Kurt,” he corrected. “I woke up and there was no one here, and I guess I panicked. Sorry, I shouldn’t have called. Dad’ll be back soon, I was just-”

“Oh no, don’t apologize, I’m glad you did call, sweetheart,” she interrupted, sounding more awake, but also a little concerned. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon, and we can talk for a little until he does, okay?”

“Okay.” Kurt hated being so needy. He was almost an adult, and he couldn’t sit alone for five minutes without having a panic attack. So much for that haze over his memories making things easier if he couldn’t even stand to be alone. “Um, what time is it?”

“It’s just a little before midnight.” Okay, so he hadn’t been asleep very long at all. Dad would be back. “How’s your head feeling? Okay?”

“Yeah, it’s okay.” Kurt paused for a moment, struggling with the phrasing. “Carole, what’s been going on? I know you aren’t supposed to let me get upset, but this is really stupid. I have a right to know.”

“I know, Kurt, I talked to your dad and the doctor tonight. It’s not fair to you, and we’re going to tell you what’s been going on tomorrow morning. We were just really worried that you could relapse, please don’t be angry.”

“I’m not, I promise, I just really-” Kurt was interrupted by the sound of the door to his room swinging open, and he twisted around to see who was coming in. “Dad’s back, I think, hang on.” Kurt rolled onto his back again, and everything that he was going to say died in his throat.

***

 Being in the clink was boring, Sue had learned. Being arrested upon her arrival home from her storage locker, where she had spent a productive afternoon loading her kidnapping van with all sorts of incriminating evidence in preparation for her drive out to the cabin to burn it all had been quite the buzzkill, but she was confident that the situation was still salvageable.

The recording that Burt Hummel had made of their conversation was a problem. She would have trouble making that disappear, and in fact it was probably nearly impossible at this point. He should consider investing in a phone with a better microphone if he was going to play superspy since most of what they had said to each other was unintelligible on first listen, but there had been enough there to hold her for questioning, if not enough to press charges yet. If everything she had said had come through clearly in that recording she would’ve been nailed to the wall.

Well, at the very least she’d learned a valuable lesson about monologues and when they weren’t appropriate. All of her careful work in dissuading the police from suspecting her had been destroyed by that recording, and now she’d have to work twice as hard to clean up this mess. The police were still incompetent, so that was something in her favour.

Sue wished that she had henchmen back, which set her to wondering why she didn’t just get some. Otto and Andre had had a good long time in Russia, and she wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving them unsupervised again. They could be quite useful.

She was being watched by the police again, but they were doing just as terrible of a job as they had previously so she wasn’t concerned about that. It meant that she couldn’t get out to light an evidence bonfire, but the storage container was in a fake name and paid with cash. It was virtually untraceable, especially considering that she’d removed the security cameras, and her new henchmen would probably be very capable of lighting a fire.

Don Semyon was extremely pleased to hear from her, as always, and immediately promised to punish Andre and Otto for their mistakes and send her some new loaner henchmen to clean up. She figured that her problems were solved, right up until she realized that they were working off of different values of “clean up”, and that she actually didn’t really want Kurt and his entire family assassinated. Instead she thanked him for his assistance, and said that her pride demanded that she solve her problems on her own at this point.

So henchmen were out. That was okay, there was lots of other ways to take care of things. She just had to think of them.

***

Sue spent the next three days trying to figure out exactly how to deal with the existence of her on-tape confession. Nothing after they’d gone down to the basement had come through perfectly clearly, but there was enough there that given time they could piece together a lot of what she had said and then she would be done for.

She could sneak into the police station and destroy all the traces of it that she could find, but there were undoubtedly enough copies that she wouldn’t get them all. She had spent a lot of time considering what Burt had said to her, about her love of manipulation and squirming out of trouble. And considering what had made her decide to cut her losses with the whole kidnapping tactic anyway. Jeannie.

Her sister would have been disappointed. She had really hurt someone, hurt his future, hurt his family and friends. She had done it to people before, and she had never, ever cared, rationalizing everything away. Sue opened the door to the basement and walked halfway down the steps, sitting down and propping her chin on her hands.

She had learned a lesson about monologuing, but she needed to say some things aloud to properly consider them. She had thought about them so many times, and they had still seemed reasonable so long as they were in her head. It was time to say them.

“I was trying to fulfill a promise made in my sister’s memory, that I would change things for disabled people in this country by getting elected to Congress. I tried to psych out my competition by abducting his son, who had never hurt me. I drugged him and locked him in my basement without food for five days. And I knew that I shouldn’t. As soon as that car window broke and he was screaming for help, I knew that I had crossed a line and I told myself that I hadn’t, that as long as he didn’t get hurt the line was still intact. And I believed myself.”

“And then he got hurt, and I thought that since I didn’t push him down these stairs that it wasn’t my fault. I moved him to a bed, I gave him a bath, I put a cast on his arm. And I kept going. I didn’t stop. I nearly killed him by having him locked in a freezing cold storage shed overnight, and I still wasn’t going to let him go until I thought about what my sister would have wanted.”

“And everything that happened after that is my fault too, and I was still trying to manipulate people and get out of trouble because I didn’t think it would help Kurt if I was punished for it. But mostly I wanted to manipulate my way out of a bad situation rather than accept the consequences. Because the consequences suck. But maybe...” Sue trailed off. She had said enough.

Sue sat there for a long time before coming to a decision. She stood up, stretching out the kinks from sitting so long, and headed upstairs. There was only one solution.

***

When Burt came back from talking to a police officer about a possible lead they were pursuing that somehow couldn’t wait until morning, the door to Kurt’s room was open. He had left it closed when he’d slipped out to avoid waking Kurt up with talking, and everyone else was at home in bed. There was something wrong.

Burt broke into a run down the hallway. He grabbed the doorjamb to steady himself when he reached the doorway, and was nearly run into from behind by the officer he had just been speaking to moments before.

Kurt was gone. His IV was disconnected, the bed was bare except for pillows and  _Kurt was gone_.

“Shit,” the man behind him breathed out, before regaining control of himself and gesturing to his radio. “I just got the call that Sylvester left her house and gave the officers watching her the slip. I’ll call this in.” He engaged his radio and started speaking urgently, but Burt wasn’t listening. He took a step forward and looked around. The blankets off the bed were gone, and so was his coat. His phone was open and working, and he could hear voices on the other end. He picked it up.  _Carole_ , the screen read.

He swallowed. “Carole, are you there?”

“Burt? What the hell is going on? I was talking to Kurt and he panicked about something and then there’s been nothing!”

“Kurt’s gone,” Burt said, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all in his panic. “How long since you were talking to him?”

“What? Oh god, um, I’m not sure, maybe two minutes? A little less.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going to find him.” Burt flipped the phone shut and slipped it into his pocket. He turned back to the officer, who gestured to his radio.

“I’ve alerted security, they’re moving to monitor all possible entrances and exits. There’s something wrong with the camera system, security is unable to access it so we’re stuck with the old fashioned way. Do you have any idea where she would take him?”

“No,” Burt said flatly. “I have no idea what she’s doing. She’s completely insane. My wife says she was talking to Kurt about two minutes ago. She couldn’t have gotten him out of the hospital in that time, and now it’s just a question of finding them. We’re going to need help. I have no idea what she’ll do to him.”

Burt walked past him into the hallway, and looked up and down. He had been gone for ten minutes maximum. Had she just been hiding somewhere, waiting for him to go? The hallways were deserted. The elevators were right there. He had made it so  _easy_.

This couldn’t be happening again.

***

Kurt hadn’t screamed. He hadn’t struggled. Sue Sylvester had come in and said that she needed to talk to him, and he had just sat there frozen while she pulled the IV out of his arm and wrapped him up in his dad’s coat before slinging him over her shoulders and grabbing the blankets off the bed.

He regained control of himself in the elevator, but held himself still because holy cow Sue was tall and he had hit his head enough for a lifetime so he wasn’t about to start kicking. It wasn’t like it would help. He’d kicked before. He knew he’d kicked before and it hadn’t changed anything.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, because while there was a litany of questions running through his head, he kind of mostly wanted to know if he was looking forward to another week tied up in a basement or just more head trauma. The elevator stopped, and Sue stepped out into a deserted hallway and turned left, walking with purpose.

“Nothing, Porcelain, you’re going to be fine.” Sue opened a door marked with a picture of stairs, and Kurt had to close his eyes against a sudden fit of wooziness when she turned to go through the doorway. He found himself with his forehead pressed against her shoulder when his vision came back into focus, and then he was bouncing up and down as she climbed the stairs and why were they going up?

Sue opened one more door and carried him through it, then swung him down carefully. Kurt’s head swam, and he barely had time to choke out a warning before he was throwing up. Sue flipped him over as he began to heave, and he was vaguely aware of his forearms and knees resting on a hard, frozen surface before his vision greyed out.

When he was done, his face was damp with sweat and tears. He was pulled back into a kneeling position, and then Sue wiped his face off brusquely with one of the blankets she’d grabbed from his bed, holding him up with her other hand. When she finished and pulled her hand away, Kurt’s head swam and the next thing he was aware of was being swaddled in the blanket  _that had just been used to wipe vomit off his face no gross stop that_.

“Stoppit,” he mumbled. “No.”

“I’m trying to stop it, Porcelain. It’s all going to be over tonight.” Kurt shivered and looked away from her face, set in a determined expression disturbingly reminiscent of her coach-face. He was looking up at stars. They were outside.

“Where’re we?” Kurt asked. His head spun as he looked higher up into the sky. It was dark, and he hadn’t seen the stars in so long. His breath came out in a frosty exhale, and he shivered, the cold seeping through the blanket to his otherwise bare legs almost immediately.

“Roof of the hospital. Are you going to throw up again? I’d rather you didn’t.” Sue grabbed his face and tilted his head until he was looking at her again. “Are you?”

“No.” Kurt tried to look away again, but she held his face steady. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I was never going to kill you. All of this,” she gestured down his body, “was a result of incidents that I never meant to let happen, but they were my fault. I’m sorry.”

Kurt blinked, starting to feel a little more clearheaded. “How can it stop tonight, if you aren’t going to kill me? I don’t feel like this will ever stop. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

“Yeah, that’s what I told your dad. There is nothing I can do that will fix this for you. But I’m going to try.” Sue slid an arm around his thighs and another around his shoulders, standing with a grunt of effort. Kurt’s head flopped back despite his effort to support himself, but Sue only took a few steps before sitting down on the concrete, leaning against the wall of the stairwell in a shadow and cradling Kurt in her lap. She carefully rewrapped his bare feet in the blanket, and then tipped his head against her shoulder. Kurt stiffened at the overly close hold, but Sue just patted his back. “We need to have a conversation, and you won’t last long out here sitting on the concrete. I’m not going to hurt you, and if I was, it’s not like you could prevent it. Just relax.”

Kurt thought sardonically that less relaxing words had very possibly never been spoken, but then he was being readjusted to look up at the sky rather than a winter jacket styled to look like a tracksuit and his response got lost somewhere between his brain and his tongue.

“Pretty, aren’t they?” Sue said from behind him. “The stars. Haven’t really sat down and just looked at the stars since Jeannie got sick the last time. Didn’t want to.”

“Yeah,” Kurt replied absently. They were beautiful. He hadn’t even known that he had missed them until now.

“I should have left you in your bed, probably.”

“Yeah, but I think I’m okay,” Kurt said. “Not dead, probably not dying. Blaine isn’t going to leave me. Dad will help me, and so will everyone else. I can come back from this.”

“I know you can.” Sue sounded vaguely choked up, and that more than anything confused Kurt.

“Why?” Kurt said suddenly, before he even knew he had decided to. “Why did you do this to me?”

Sue was quiet for a moment. Kurt could feel her chest moving up and down as she breathed, and her breath freezing in the air rhythmically obscured his view of the stars. “I made a mistake,” she said. “I weighed what I thought was the good of the many against the good of the few, and I was wrong about which was which.”

“That’s it?” Kurt said derisively, a sneer curling his lip. “You ruined my life, and that’s all you have to say for yourself?”

“I could say a lot more,” Sue said sharply. Kurt cringed away, but she just continued, “But that’s what it boils down to. I thought that you’d be fine, and your father would pull out of the election, and that would be that. It didn’t go the way I planned.”

“Why are you here now, then, if you don’t actually have something to say?” Kurt snapped. “You missed the adrenaline rush of kidnapping somebody?”

“No. I came here to tell you what I did to you and why, if you want to know, and to ask what you want me to do. The police don’t have much. They have a little more now, obviously, what with all of this, but I could turn myself in, say I did it. Or I could keep lying and manipulating my way out of trouble. I’m going to leave it up to you.”

“This is completely insane,” Kurt said as flatly as he could with his voice trembling. “Why do you think that there is even a question in there? Turn yourself in! Why would you think- What is  _wrong_  with you, did you think that I would say something else?”

Sue had gone stiff as a board underneath him, and Kurt barely had time to begin to regret responding so quickly and decisively before she said, “It had crossed my mind, actually. Do you want to know what happened to you or should we just go inside and find the police? I’m sure that they’re here by now. And, by the way, me telling you the entire story is an expiring offer since I want you to hear it from me, so we can either wait a little longer out here and I’ll tell you or we can go in now, and you can just have whatever you remember as all you know about it ever, because I won’t be telling the cops the whole story at any point.”

Kurt craned his neck until he was looking up at her face. She was still holding herself stiff, and her face was unreadable. His dad was ripping the hospital apart underneath them, Kurt knew. But there was going to be yelling and poking and prodding when they went in, and he needed to know what had happened, it wasn’t right that things had been done to him that he didn’t know about. He didn’t even feel that cold yet. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he was outside a while longer. And he had missed the stars. “Okay,” he said finally. “Tell me.”

He felt Sue relax, and her breath rushed out of her in a cloud of ice crystals. “Good choice. I’ll be honest, I am not looking forward to heading back down there.” She adjusted his head so he was looking up at the sky again rather than her face, and began to talk. Kurt stared up at the stars as the cold wind brushed across his cheek, and listened.

“My neighbour had this irritating habit of leaving his porch lights on, but he also had this dog...”

***

Epilogue

June 2012 (Six Months Later) – The National Show Choir Championships

Kurt Hummel leaned forward over the table, carefully applying stage makeup to his step-brother’s cringing face. “Finn, you have been in New Directions for three  _years_  and the part where we wear makeup for performances hasn’t changed, it’s just  _cover-up_ for god’s sake, stop  _flinching_.” He punctuated his words with swipes of the sponge, and the waiting line of New Directions boys leaned back in what appeared to be a futile effort to make him forget they were there.

“You’re not wearing any,” Finn muttered rebelliously.

“That would be because Mercedes does mine, and has since this group started. It’s like a tradition for us, and I missed out on Sectionals and Regionals this year so if you would  _stop moving_  so I can hurry up and go find her, I would appreciate it.” He careful blended at Finn’s hairline. “There, you’re done. Don’t touch your face.”

Blaine touched his elbow. “Kurt, why don’t you go get yours done? I can totally handle this.”

Kurt flashed a grateful smile and dug through the bag, looking at the line of boys to see who was left. “Okay, um, this one’s Mike and Puck, this one’s Artie and Sam, and this one’s me,” he rolled his eyes and drew out the palest shade, “so I will be back in a little bit.”

He left the tiny dressing room that the boys were crammed into and nearly ran into his dad as he did. “Hi dad,” he said in mild surprise. “Um, what are you doing back here?”

“Came to check on you, bud,” he replied easily. “But also to wish you to break a- no, still can’t say it. Good luck, kiddo. You’re going to be great.”

Kurt smiled despite himself. “I’m fine dad, just a little headache, and I took a Tylenol. Thank you.”

Dad swept him up in a hug, mindful of his hair but not of wrinkling his shirt. “Dad! Seriously! I have to go on-stage in less than half an hour, I don’t have time to iron my shirt.”

He let Kurt go after a moment, smoothing down his shirt and leaving a hand on his shoulder. “You look fine, Kurt, no wrinkles or anything. I really came back here because I wanted to tell you that I’m real proud of the way you fought your way back after what happened, and that no matter what happens today, you won. Y’know that the doctors didn’t think you’d be finishing school on time, or going to college, or any of that?”

“I’m not finishing on time,” Kurt reminded him. “I just got special dispensation to finish everything in the summer. And me actually getting better was mostly luck that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, Dad.”

“Kurt, there was a time when they figured you’d be repeating senior year, if you were ever able to go back to school at all, but you proved them wrong. You had to relearn how to walk, to talk, to write properly. Your determination to get better, to succeed, is what changed that. Don’t sell yourself short. Sometimes I look at you and I go, “Is that my kid? How can someone as incredible as him be related to me?” I’m proud to be your dad, Kurt. Carole’s proud of you, your friends are, and you can bet that if your mom was here she’d be damn proud of the person you grew into.”

Kurt’s eyes welled up with tears, and he ducked his head into his dad’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around him. There were things more important than a wrinkled shirt. “Thanks dad,” he said thickly.

Dad held him for a moment, then let him go. “Still no wrinkles,” he said jokingly. “I think we’re good. I’ll see you out there.” He patted Kurt’s shoulder then turned and left.

Kurt took a moment to gather himself, then entered the pandemonium that was the girl’s change room before a performance. No one seemed to be trying to kill each other, or even fighting, so that was a pleasant change.

Mercedes spotted him, brushing past Sugar and Brittany to grab his hand. “Here, Kurt, over here.” She led him to a stool and sat him down. “Did you bring yours?”

Kurt handed over the cover-up and a sponge, and closed his eyes. “You all look beautiful, by the way,” he said in passing.

“Of course we do, but thanks.” He could hear the smile in her voice as she scolded, “Now stop talking and let me do this.”

Mercedes was much better at makeup than he was, and probably infinitely better than Blaine. Kurt spared a thought to the nightmare that was Blaine with access to makeup, remembering the heavy, heavy rouge he’d worn the opening night of the delayed West Side Story production. He was going to have to go back to the boy’s side and fix all of their makeup after this, probably. At least they didn’t have anything but cover up to put on each other.

Mercedes finished, and Kurt opened his eyes, looking up at her. “Thanks,” he said. “I’d hug you, but that dress will wrinkle and I am already skirting disaster with my shirt.”

“You nervous?” Mercedes asked.

“What? No,” Kurt lied.

“I’m just asking because you look a little ill. You’re going to kill it, Kurt, you have nothing to worry about.”

“If I am nervous, it’s about trying to measure up to you. You’re going to be amazing.”

“Always am,” Mercedes said mock seriously before breaking out into an enormous grin. “That’s probably enough of a love fest. Get on back to the boys side before they assume we’re keeping you and stage an operation to get you back.”

Kurt smiled and fled the room before Rachel even looked up from her pre-performance ritual and realized he was there. Blaine was waiting outside the boy’s dressing room for him.

“How bad is it in there?” Kurt asked. “Do I want to know?”

“It’s probably not great,” Blaine admitted. “I was almost finished with Mike before Sam decided that he might want to work in special effects someday and he needed the practice. I figured I didn’t want to be in there when he sponged someone in the eye.”

Kurt considered his options and leaned against the wall beside Blaine. “I think I’ll leave them to it. They know not to get makeup on their shirts or they’ll be facing my wrath, so I think it’ll be okay.” There was a loud thump against the dressing room door, and they both jumped. “I’m going to wait a little further down the hall,” he concluded, pushing off the wall.

“You have the best plans,” Blaine said, following him. When they’d reached a safe distance from the door, Kurt turned around to face Blaine, grabbing his hands.

“My dad was here,” he announced, keeping his voice low. “He said he was proud of me.”

“He loves you,” Blaine whispered back, “and you’re amazing. Of course he’s proud of you.” Blaine let go of his hands and pulled him closer, settling his hands on Kurt’s hips. “I am going to miss you so much next year.”

“I’ll miss you too,” Kurt said, blinking to hold back the sudden tears. “Crying is terrible for the voice though, and I have already done more than enough of it, so maybe we should talk about something less sad.”

“Okay,” Blaine said mischievously, “what kind of puppy are we getting when we finally get our own place?”

“Wait, when did we decide we were getting a puppy? Animals  _shed_ , Blaine, and you have to feed them and clean up after them. I have already lived with Finn, I do not need to get a substitute.” Kurt smiled to take any sting out of his words, and Blaine squeezed his hips in his hands.

“Well, I will just have to convince you otherwise,” he said in a smug voice, leaning in to kiss Kurt. It was an obvious distraction tactic, but Kurt didn’t mind, somehow.

When they broke apart, Kurt smiled. “You’re very convincing,” he said, “but we’re still not getting a dog.”

“Aww, Kurt-”

The boy’s dressing room door banged open, letting out the noise of what sounded like a battlefield, and Mike leaned out. “Kurt! Blaine! I need some help in here!”

“Back to work?” Blaine asked.

“I’m looking at it as practice for wrangling future co-stars,” Kurt sighed. “Shall we?”

Twenty minutes later, Puck and Sam had been separated to fume and subsequently calmed down and done the “fist bump of forgiveness”, as Kurt termed it, and everyone was ready to go on. Rachel stood behind Kurt in the wings, giving him what he thought was supposed to be a pep talk but was really more of a “if you freeze up, this is the signal for me to come and sing with you” that was not helping his nerves.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the announcer finally said. “From Lima, Ohio, the McKinley High School New Directions!”

The lights on the stage went out, and Rachel gave him a tiny shove. “You’ll be amazing, now go!”

The music started, quieting the murmurs of the audience. Kurt quietly walked to his mark at center stage and took a deep breath, pasting on his show face.

A single spotlight came up, blinding him. A million things flashed through his head, but none of them mattered. Kurt tilted his face up and began to sing.

The End


End file.
